
Hustle in Hand (Still)
2014
Hustle in Hand (Still), completed in 2014, presents Shahryar Nashat's signature interrogation of the body as both subject and object, caught in the friction between desire, labor, and display. The HD video work draws on Nashat's ongoing engagement with sculptural thinking applied to moving image, treating the human form with the cool, precise attention typically reserved for manufactured objects. Gesture and stillness become charged categories here, as the work suspends its subjects in a register somewhere between exertion and arrest, inviting viewers to read physical effort as a kind of performance that is simultaneously intimate and deeply constructed. Nashat, who divides his practice between Europe and the United States, has built a critically recognized body of work that engages philosophy, architecture, and queer theory through an aesthetic that is rigorously refined. Hustle in Hand (Still) reflects the artist's sustained interest in how bodies are conditioned, optimized, and aestheticized within contemporary culture, with the video format allowing him to manipulate duration and repetition as formal tools rather than mere documentary devices. The work carries the signed authentication that collectors expect from a serious acquisition, and its current placement at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts affirms its standing within institutional discourse. For collectors building a holdings in video art with philosophical depth and formal discipline, this work represents a particularly considered entry point into Nashat's practice. Its compact year of production, 2014, situates it within a productive period during which the artist was gaining significant international traction, making the work both historically legible and increasingly relevant to serious collections focused on the intersection of body politics and contemporary moving image.
- Medium
- HD Video
- Signed
- Yes
- Location
- Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA
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