Q&A: Artist Zarina Nares on making limited run artwork

“Hey. Honestly, I’m just… I don’t know.”
By Zarina Nares
Art Book
8 x 10, 132 pages
10 editions

Hey. Honestly, I'm just...I don't know. is a small-run book by the artist Zarina Nares that sequences still images from the reality TV show Selling Sunset into a commentary on how women target each other’s insecurities when expressing anger. Only a few of the limited run of editions remain.

Earlier this week we spoke with the NYC-based artist about the work and what’s behind it.

METALABEL: Can you tell us about this project and how it started?

ZARINA: Reality TV has always been a part of the media I consume. Early MTV, early VH1, and the Kardashians were very much part of my middle school experience. I’ve always been interested in watching people express intense emotions on TV. Anger on TV is so normalized. When you really slow down and watch — there's a lot of anger there. 

This book is specifically these women fighting at a party and saying awful things to each other. That's such a norm on reality TV, to see women in these angry states. That's not something that only exists in reality TV, unfortunately. But reality TV lets us sit back and watch. An opportunity to look at how people interact.

METALABEL: There’s many layers of media in this release: screenshots of a reality TV show on a streaming service printed in a book. What happens when we shift mediums?

ZARINA: It creates an opportunity for you to see something differently and have a different kind of experience. There’s a lot of value in transferring something from its original context into a different one. We appreciate it differently. One of the other books I'm working on is all these stills of Real Housewives fights. They start to look like Renaissance paintings. They become really beautiful. There's this funny thing where a lot of the mannerisms become the same. There's a lot of finger pointing and glass throwing.

METALABEL: You made 10 editions of this. Why the limited run?

ZARINA: I liked the idea of making small books that are accessible artworks. I’m not trying to make a ton of things or sell a ton of copies. I wanted to make it feel special. 

METALABEL: What got you interested in Metalabel?

ZARINA: I struggle with my creative practice and how to exist within a capitalist framework. One feels like the antithesis of the other, but it’s complicated when you’re trying to critique these things in your work and also survive. I appreciated a lot of the content that you guys were posting, and I bought The Creative Independent zine. I like that there are spaces like this that are cool and well-intentioned. 

Thank you to Zarina for taking the time to speak with us. Explore her Metalabel debut here.