Zarina Nares
REAL FEELINGS, 2025. Solo exhibition at Visit, Newburgh. July 18 – August 9. Curated by Noah Wagman. Documentation by Visit.
Fear survives by disguising itself as desire. We want immediate answers because we fear the unknown, certain relationships because we fear being alone, and permanence because we fear death. The ambiguity of existence is scary, and sometimes wanting feels safer.
It makes sense, then, why so much yearning finds its form in the algorithm, why ChatGPT becomes a therapist, why YouTube tells us how to self-actualize, why strangers sitting in their cars tell you, “you are exactly where you’re meant to be,” and why believing them feels like a kind of relief.
Some quantum physicists suggest that we’ve misunderstood the order of things. It isn’t “I need to see it to believe it,” but that belief is what allows us to see at all. At the same time, there is a tension between the beliefs we need to survive, and the ones we adopt in order to feel like we’re surviving. Online, that tension becomes content—embedded in what entertains, sells, consoles, and claims to know. It’s not just what we want, but what might momentarily settle the restlessness beneath it.
We upload our beliefs into a system designed to respond with attention. And still, something gets through. A post, a phrase, a voice. It arrives at just the right moment. Manufactured or not, it settles into the body as something true.
REAL FEELINGS, 2025
Video, TRT: 32min
COLLAPSE IS THE OPENING (TRUST), 2025
Modified 1980s KEBE lounge chair, UV Print
Palatable Artwork, 2025
AI-generated image, Acrylic mounted print, Aluminum frame
Certificate of Authenticity, 2025
Parchment paper, Black metal document frame