Opening of the exhibition Noor Abed. A Night We Held Between

On the occasion of the opening screening of the audiovisual work A Night We Held Between (2024) at the Museu Tàpies, Noor Abed and the project curators, LaOtra (María Amador and Patricia Sorroche), discuss the artist’s personal and creative universe on the basis of the book Stars at Midday, presented for the first time in Barcelona and which will be available in the Museu Tàpies bookshop.

Stars at Midday –نجوم الضُهر is a personal diary where the artist sets down poetic and audiovisual notes on the production phase of the film A Night We Held Between, shot in Palestine in 2023 with her family and friends. The film centres on Song for the Fighters, found in the sound archive of the Popular Art Center Palestine. Through the layers of the song, in a maze of sounds and places, the film evokes history as a permanent present tense, a collective act of imagination.

Like the film, but more intimately and profoundly, the book weaves together narrative fragments, songs and daily observations to create a fusion of sequences of natural, prepared movements, of documentary and fictional elements.

Through a choreography of bodies, places, stories and time frames, Abed’s work encourages thought about the forms of social action and resistance in everyday life.

Noor Abed (Jerusalem, 1988) is an interdisciplinary artist and film-maker who works in the intersection between performance, media and film. Through a process of visual creation of images, her work creates situations in which social possibilities are rehearsed and performed.

Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York (2015–2016) and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) of Ashkal Alwan in Beirut (2016–2017). She received her BA from the International Academy of Arts in Palestine and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles.

Abed’s work has been screened and exhibited at Anthology Film Archives, New York; Gabes Cinema Fen Film Festival, Tunisia; Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (Jihlava); Leonard & Bina Gallery, Montreal; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; The Mosaic Rooms, London; and MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome among others. In 2021–2022 she was assistant curator on the artistic staff of documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany. Abed has been a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2022–2024).

Han Nefkens Foundation – Museu Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2022, in collaboration with NTU CCA, Singapore; WIELS, Brussels; Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila; and Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai.