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Noor Abed
26 February – 18 April 2025
I saw people from their backs.
When I sleep, small stones emerge from my belly.
The land doesn’t hold us.
It grows in our skin.
Precious Cargo is pleased to present The Moment of Sun, an exhibition by Palestinian artist and filmmaker, Noor Abed. The exhibition takes shape as a 50-minute looping video and sound installation of her two most recent films, our songs were ready for all wars to come (2021) and A Night We Held Between (2024). The installation is accompanied by her book, Stars at Midday –نجوم الضُهر, an account of Abed’s film production process which combines diary entries, poetry, and images (Occasional Papers, 2024).
Abed draws from a constellation of life forms and of personal and collective memory set in the landscapes of occupied Palestine. With family and friends as her collaborators, her work incorporates the people, animals, dances, organic material, and spirit beings both present and hidden in the land and villages where the films are composed. What is shrouded becomes revealed, and what is detectable transmutes from visual to palpable. Slow movement, choreography, folklore, droning noise, and song draw on ancient and contemporary paradigms: the land and its creatures are in an inseparable relationship, what is obscured is not forgotten, and resistance is a practice of everyday life.
our songs were ready for all wars to come (2021), was recorded with Super 8 film at an ancient water well in Al-Jib, Palestine. The well is now empty and drone-like audio recorded there accompanies choreographed scenes. The landscape is the main character of this film, and people’s movement is often intimately bound to the surfaces, crevices and cut-out holes in the earth. Something unseen permeates from within the caves and is understood by Abed’s characters. This imagery is accompanied by the only narration in the film, a song by the Palestinian singer, Maya Khaldi. Its lyrics collage folk tales that explore water, loss, mourning and transformation. The film reawakens latent memories, stories and rituals in Palestine, exploring the critical stance of ‘folklore’ as a source of knowledge, and its connection to alternative social and representational models in Palestine.
A Night We Held Between (2024) was shot using 16 mm film in Al-Jib, in the hills leading to Jericho and at the Dead Sea in occupied Palestine. The film’s audio centers around Song for the Fighters, sung by Um Alif from Tarshiha, Galilee, and recorded in 1994 in her home with neighbors. Abed encountered the recording while digging through the sonic archive library at the Popular Art Centre in Ramallah. The images move in tandem with the song. Literal and figurative labyrinths and ancient caves come to the forefront. A sense of permanence stands in contrast to the fluid and agile movements of the warriors and dancers. The work traverses visible layers, revealing a vast, hidden world that points to what was lost, forgotten, or unsaid. The gravity of lyrics is mirrored in the sorrowful power of Alif’s voice and is reflected again in the land and the ancestral memories held within.
The accompanying book, Stars at Midday –نجوم الضُهر, chronicles Abed’s process in the production of A Night We Held Between. Filmed in 2023 with family and friends, it compiles visual and poetic notes from the production phase of the film. Like the film, the book interweaves narrative fragments, song, and diaristic observations, fusing natural and composed sequences of movement, documentary, and fictional elements.
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Noor Abed is a Palestinian artist and filmmaker. She works at the intersection of performance and film, alongside alternative pedagogy. She is a co-founder of the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the e-flux Film Award for A Night We Held Between (2024) and the Han Nefkens Foundation/ Fundació Antoni Tàpies film production award (2022).
Precious Cargo is a small press and slow gallery project between Kevin Fisher and rocki swiderski. It is based in Tucson, Arizona. The Moment of Sun is organized by Tasha Bjelić and rocki swiderski. This exhibition was supported in part by Night Bloom: Grants for Artists, through MOCA Tucson and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Special thanks to Jack Graydon, Asher Shay-Nemirow, Drew Cassidy Lenihan, Jacob Schaeperkotter-Cochran, Colton MacKenzie, Mable P, Nika Kaiser, Robert Hurley, and Shelley Schweizer.
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