GPC TALKS (#4) Can Images Grieve? Sharing a Philosophy of Practice
■ DATE:
■ ARTISTS:
■ GUESTS:
■ SOUND DESIGN:
■ CURATED BY:
Taking their joint exhibition project as a starting point, artists Noor Abuarafeh and Huda Takriti, along with curator Lina Ramadan, reflect on their practices in the fourth edition of the Golden Pixel Talks. They approach their work as a form of anti-colonial dialogue with existing—or absent—historical images, objects, and narratives. By interweaving key concepts, they develop a philosophy of their own practice. Golden Pixel Talks invite artistic and academic researchers whose fields intersect to engage in dialogue, enriching the film-focused perspectives of the Golden Pixel Cooperative with socio-political and artistic viewpoints. The podcast format creates discursive spaces for explorations at the boundary between the known and the unknown in science and art. Keywords: The Role of Language, Oral History, Time, Erasure, Tracing Absences, Fact versus Fiction, Secrets, and Museums Conversation language: Englisch
Biographies
Noor Abuarafeh (b. 1986, based between Jerusalem and Rotterdam) Her practice spans video, performance, publications, and video installations, with a focus on the themes of memory, history, archives, and the complexities of tracing absence.
Through her text-based videos and performances, Abuarafeh’s works questions how history is shaped, constructed, perceived, visualized, and understood—and examines the intersections between fact and fiction as well as imagination in the construction of historical narratives. In The past Abuarafeh has shown in solo and group exhibitions at De Appel (2024), Art Jameel (2024), Jakarta Biennale (2024), Frieze Museum (2023), Venice Biennale (2022), Berlin Biennale (2020), and Sharjah Biennale 13 (2017). She also participated in the Off-Biennale Gaudipolis in Budapest (2017) and the Qalandia International in Jerusalem (2018), among others. In 2019, she held her first solo exhibition, "The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost", curated by Lara Khaldi in Jerusalem.
Huda Takriti (b. 1990 in Syria, lives in Vienna) superimposes personal and national narratives in her video works and her image-text or text-text collages, aiming to spotlight gaps in historical and national memory. She is currently pursuing a PhD-in-Practice at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she is examining the notion of archival erasure relating to the (hi)stories of female freedom fighters from the Middle East in times of armed anti-colonial struggle. She questions the construction and production of historical narratives, and explores the potential of “contamination” as a way for bridging archival gaps. She completed her master's studies at the TransArts department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2020. She also completed her bachelor's degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, Syria, in 2012. Her work has been awarded several scholarships and prizes, including the Vordemberge-Gildewart Award (2022), the Kunsthalle Wien Prize (2020), and the Camargo Foundation Fellowship (2023), among others.
Lina Ramadan is a curator and writer specializing in contemporary and modern art, currently based in Vienna. Her research focuses on post-colonial perspectives on the MENA region, female 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 Several "Attempts for not Forgetting: Noor Abuarafeh & Huda Takriti", Philomena+, Vienna (2025) "Ibi Ibrahim: Like Every Leaving Wasn't a Country" (2024), 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.