PROGRAMMES

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ILHAM Conversation: Noor Abed

9 November 2024, 2:00pm

We are delighted to be welcoming Palestinian artist Noor Abed to ILHAM for a special programme on 9 November 2024 at 2:00pm. After the screening of her films, Penelope (2014), our songs were ready for all wars to come (2021), and A Night We Held Between (2024), she will be in conversation with writer and director Jo Kukathas which will explore her practice and its connection to the mythology, landscape and history of Palestine. 

Made over the course of ten years, the three films weave folklore, indigenous knowledge and narratives of community and resistance into everyday representations of social life in Palestine. 

 

Film Synopsis

Penelope
2014
16mm film
4k digital transfer
6 min 28 sec, silent

Inspired by the Odyssey, based on Homer's epic poem from Greek Mythology, the film is based on the concept of myth; its position in history and relation to the present and the imaginary. The continuous presence of the female figure, as a representation of Penelope, unfolds the absence of the hero figure. Through the act of sewing fish, she is returning to a past memory simultaneously. The past is activated in the imagination, reinforcing through movement its dislocation from its original site. The work attempts to reflect a reality other than the one history offers. Here, myth could be seen as a collective dream and public imagination.

our songs were ready for all wars to come
2021
Super 8mm film
4k digital transfer
20 min, sound

Choreographed scenes based on documented folktales from Palestine, the film aims to create a new aesthetic form to re-awaken latent stories based around water wells and their connection to communal rituals around notions of disappearance, mourning, and death. our songs were ready for all the wars to come explores the critical stance of ‘folklore’ as a source of knowledge, and its possible connection to alternative social and representational models in Palestine. How can ‘folklore’ become a common emancipatory tool for people to overturn dominant discourses, reclaim their history and land, and rewrite reality as they know it?

The only narration in the film is a song, which is sung by Palestinian singer Maya Khaldi. Its lyrics are a collage of different folk tales. Captured through mediums of film and sound, situated stories are archived and represented, creating a context that explores the capacity of social formation, and the possibility of recalling a memory that is capable of decentralizing images of fixity; a memory that is liberated from monuments.

A Night We Held Between
2024
16mm film
4k digital transfer
30 min, sound

The film centers around “Song for The Fighters,” which was found at the sonic archive of the Popular Art Center Palestine. Through the layers of the song, in a labyrinth of sounds and sites, the film conjures history as a permanent present tense, a collective and imaginative act.

The film was shot in ancient sites in Palestine—caves, carved holes, underground passages, and wild valleys—the land becomes our main character. It traverses beyond the first layer of visibility to reveal a vast, hidden world similar to the one we know. Throughout the film, scenes intertwine rituals and narratives of community and resistance into everyday representations of social life in Palestine, thus emphasizing the role of collective rhythmic movement and the potential impact that shared feelings can evoke in creating and sustaining a community.

 

About the Artist

Noor Abed (b.1988) is a Palestinian artist who works at the intersection of performance and film. Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in Νew York in 2015-16, and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut 2016-17. Abed’s work has been screened and exhibited internationally at Anthology Film Archives, New York; Gabes Cinema Fen Film Festival, Tunisia; Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, Lagos Biennale; Leonard & Bina Gallery, Montréal; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; The Mosaic Rooms, London; and MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, among others. In 2020, together with Lara Khaldi she co-founded the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed was an assistant curator for documenta fifteen, Kassel 2021-22.  She is currently an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022-24 and was recently awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation/Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2022.

 

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Seating is limited to please RSVP to info@ilhamgallery.com to reserve your seats.