Noor Abed: "You constantly feel like something is being taken away from you."

BarcelonaPalestinian artist Noor Abed (Jerusalem, 1988) is one of the people whose life was profoundly altered by the construction of the Israeli wall. Her career began in the field of performance, but those added restrictions forced her to rethink how she could express herself, and she found a new medium in video art. "I lived half my life in Jerusalem, I finished high school, but when they built the wall I had to move to Ramallah. Afterwards they didn't allow me to enter Jerusalem, and I think my body didn't understand," says Noor Abed on the occasion of the exhibition at Tàpies Museum from one of his latest works, the video At night we held between, the result of having won the video art production scholarship Han Nefkens Foundation Tàpies Museum in 2022, endowed with 15,000 euros.

At night we held between, which can be seen until July 27, is a film imbued with a spiritual and at the same time political charge, with which Abed aims to reveal invisible layers of the harsh reality of Palestine. The central role is played by Song for the fighters, that he found in the sound archive of the Popular Art Center of Palestine "I'm obsessed with being close to death, and with the unjust way people are killed. And I always think: where do they go?" So she returned to the caves where she made her previous film to depict an atmosphere she finds very dense, filled with the souls of the unjust victims of war. "I feel a buzzing around me; it's heavy. As if you have to cut through the air to walk," says Abed.

The entire creative process reflects the drama of the Israeli invasion. Abed had to speed up her work following the outbreak of the "genocide," as she puts it, in October 2023, and during filming they were visited by armed settlers. "You constantly have a feeling of dispossession, of losing something, or rather, having it taken away from you," says the artist, for whom analog film is another "very precious" object that she must protect from damage. "You can't see what you've filmed until the films arrive at the lab and come back," he adds. "So not being able to see what I'm filming also maintains the tension, and the films travel with me, crossing borders, checkpoints, scanners, and are affected by the systems, by the occupation, by the negotiations for the border guards to do all of this." Abed also explains that the fact that they've been scanned is noticeable in the films. "The films are like an extension of my body," the artist emphasizes.

Abed's works, who lives between Amsterdam and Palestine, have a strong communal feel. The performers are relatives, friends, or villagers from his village. "I wanted to work with community, rituals, with the question of who we are as human beings. Because we are also largely dehumanized in this capitalist and Zionist machine. So I was also interested in that human aspect, and I returned to history, to rituals, to community, because it is a basis of resistance. And to the landscape that I,"

Elevating daily life to the status of ritual

Although now Abed makes more video than performance, movement and choreography remain essential to his work, and he will return to Barcelona to perform at the next edition of the Sâlmon festival. The choreographies of the performers ofAt night we held between are based on everyday movements, including those she has observed at funerals, and creating new choreographies for popular dances. "Perhaps the point is to turn ordinary movements into rituals, because in any community, rituals are part of resistance. And the reclaiming of history and language. You can't live without the land; I don't want to let go of that constant feeling of dispossession you have in Palestine; it's too much a part of our identity," says Abed.

The Han Nefkens Foundation Museu Tàpies grant marked a turning point in Abed's career, as she always works with 16mm film. With the money she received, she was able to buy many more rolls than her teaching salary could afford, a camera, and the development of the films in a London lab, and she was able to pay all the performers. "The grant has changed my life," Abed acknowledges. "I was able to work with more people, and I didn't have to worry about money, and that's very rare for me." The grants are based on the candidates' track record, and as Han Nefkens recalls, when the jury saw Abed's work, they awarded it "unanimously." "With the grant, the winners have money and time to work, between nine months and a year, but we're not too rigid about deadlines," says Nefkens.

In addition to being able to realize a work that they otherwise wouldn't have made, with the grant, artists have the opportunity to exhibit in museums around the world: before the Museu Tàpies, At night we held between It was on display at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore, the WIELS in Brussels, the Museum of Contemporary Art & Design in Manila, and the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai. The exhibition explores the perspectives of gender, class, and race.