exhibitions

SEVERAL ATTEMPTS FOR NOT FORGETTING

Noor Abuarafeh & Huda Takriti

15/02 – 28/03/2025

curated by Aline Lenzhofer and Lina Ramadan

 

Opening: Friday, February 14, 2025, 6 pm
with a lecture-performance by Noor Abuarafeh and Huda Takriti

Venue: philomena+ project room, Heinestraße 40, 1020 Vienna

Digital collage of the following film stills: Noor Abuarafeh, Observational Desire on a Memory that Remains, 2014; Huda Takriti, Refusing to Meet Your Eye, 2022.
 

In their collaborative exhibition, Noor Abuarafeh (b. 1986 Jerusalem, lives in Rotterdam) and Huda Takriti (b.1990 Damascus, lives in Vienna) explore gaps in historiography, archives, and practices of re-remembrance – themes that are central to the work of both artists. In the philomena+ project space, they present film, photography, and text, alongside a lecture performance. A letter correspondence serves as the starting point for reflecting on the project, modes of collective grief, witnessing, recording, and the ever changing role of archives in truth-making. 

 

The exhibition presents work-in-progress, incorporates text extracts, anecdotes, literary references, videos, and archive photos. Visitors are invited to step into the exhibition as an active space for reflection and to engage with approaches to the artistic reappraisal of history and refusal of the finality imposed on objects and meanings.

artists

NOOR ABUARAFEH

(*1986) is an 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).

curators

ALINE LENZHOFER

(*1991 in Klagenfurt) is a cultural worker and curator based in Vienna. She studied Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna and Applied Cultural Studies at the University Lumière II in Lyon. Her professional career includes positions at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Cairo, as editorial assistant at Kulte Gallery & Editions in Rabat and as publication and archive manager at the Institut d'art contemporain in Lyon. In Vienna, she was part of the team at the das weisse haus for four years, where she was responsible for communication, exhibition production and occasionally worked as a curator. Since 2018, she has been implementing curatorial projects and residencies with philomena+. In her work, she is interested in collaborative practices and cross-border exchange projects and attaches great importance to interdisciplinarity and accessibility. Her curatorial focus is on socio-political topics such as migration, ecology and gender issues. She is interested in presenting artworks that challenge dominant narratives and weave counter-stories through compelling narratives.

LINA RAMADAN

(*1990 in Doha) is a curator and writer specializing in contemporary and modern art, currently based in Vienna. Her research focuses on post-colonial MENA, women artists, and solidarities. From 2016 to 2022, she served as curator at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. Lina Ramadan is the editor of the coming book Madness of the Anthropocene: Thinking with an Image, (Kaph & 421, 2024). Recent curatorial projects include Ibi Ibrahim: Like Every Leaving Wasn’t a Country, Entre, Vienna; Taysir Batniji: No Condition is Permanent (2022-23); Kader Attia: On Silence, (2021); Raqs Media Collective: Still More World (2019); and Mohamed Melehi: 1959-1971 (2017-2018). Her recent published work include “Moments of Return in the work of Mohamed Bourouissa, Yto Barrada and Iman Issa” in Avant-garde & Liberation. Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism 2024, Ed. Kravagna, C. (Mumok, 2024); “Foreword” in Photography from Yemen Ed. Vartanian Collier, L & Ibrahim, I. (Makan Press, 2024); and “The Palaver Tree'' in Farid Belkahia: For A New Modernity. Ed. Gauthier, M. (Centre Pompidou & Mathaf, 2021). Ramadan is the recipient of the 2024-25 Darat al Funun Fellowship, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

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