Image is an Orphan (2017)

Nashat's screen installation focuses our attention on the body's relationship with technologies that filter, fragment and distance intimacy yet also generate desire and a sense of mortality. The difference between humans and machines is compared at a cellular level, as the voice reminds us 'I am water and cells', 'I am zeros and ones.' The soundtrack establishes acoustic longing and melancholy as the images loop through YouTube footage of casual and comic violence, followed by models of an unmade bed and an electric chair by artistic precursors Felix Gonzalez Torres and Andy Warhol. Nashat challenges our attention and empathy in a deliberate and affecting manner.