events
SEVERAL ATTEMPTS FOR NOT FORGETTING
reading session
Saturday, 01/03/2025, 5 pm
Venue: philomena+, Heinestraße 40, 1020 Vienna
The event is part of the exhibition Several Attempts for Not Forgetting by Noor Abuarafeh and Huda Takriti (curated by Aline Lenzhofer and Lina Ramadan).
Installation view of the exhibition Several Attempts for Not Forgetting by Noor Abuarafeh and Huda Takriti, photo: Ibrahim Dirani
In the reading session we will read collectively works and references of the artists’ practice such as Dalia Taha’s collection of letters from political prisoners in Palestine, parts of the book “we, the heartbroken” by Gargi Bhattacharyya, and Noor Abuarafeh’s novel “The earth doesn’t tell its secrets – his father once said”.
It takes place within the exhibition Several Attempts for Not Forgetting by Noor Abuarafeh and Huda Takriti, which is conceived as an active space for reflection, engaging with artistic approaches that re-examine history. In their exhibition the artists deal with witnessing, recording, and the ever changing role of archives in truth-making.
Event language: English
Participants are also invited to propose texts that fit the topic and send them beforehand to info(a)philomena.plus
artists
NOOR ABUARAFEH
(*1986 in Jerusalem) is a Palestinian artist based between Jerusalem and Rotterdam, working primarily with video, performance, publications, and video installations. Her work delves into the different forms of historical representation, including memory, storytelling, museums, and archives, as well as the challenge of tracing absences. Noor Abuarafeh’s art questions the possibility of narrating the past through immaterial means that transcend modern historical representation. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2022), Berlin Biennale (2020), Sharjah Biennale 13 (2017), Off-Biennale Gaudipolis in Budapest (2017), and Qalandia International in Jerusalem (2018), among others. In 2019, she held her first solo exhibition, *The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost*, in Jerusalem and Ramallah, curated by Lara Khaldi.
HUDA TAKRITI
(*1990 in Damascus) is an artist and a researcher based in Vienna. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus (SY) and at the TransArts department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. With her PhD in practice at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna she explores the availability and non-availability of archives relating to female freedom fighters from the Middle East in times of armed anti-colonial struggle. Questioning the construction and production of historical narratives and the possibilities of re-constructing hidden and neglected (hi)stories as well as their influence on our understanding of historiography and the processes of archival ‘truthmaking’ is central in both her artistic and scientific work. Huda Takritis latest exhibitions include: Galerie Crone, Kunsthalle Wien, Afro Asiatisches Institut, Škuc Gallery, Gallery Nova, mumok, Universitätsgalerie im Heiligenkreuzerhof, Stiftung Mercator, Kunstraum Lakeside, Centre d’art Sa Quartera, Addaya Centre for Contemporary Arts. Most recently, she was awarded the Vordemberge-Gildewart Award (2022), the Kunsthalle Wien Prize (2020), and the Camargo Foundation Fellowship (2023).
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