In her exhibition at Kunstverein München e.V., Palestinian artist Noor Abuarafeh explores the themes of memory construction, the politics of archiving, and overlooked narratives in history. Through video works and by questioning the division between actual material realities and constructed narratives of remembrance, Abuarafeh presents narratives that challenge traditional historiography and go beyond national subjecthood.
In her new work, The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost (2023), the artist focuses on an exhibition by Palestinian artists that took place in 2005 in a museum in the Swiss town of Martigny. The video follows the journey of the artworks from Switzerland to their current location in a London warehouse. Although the actual artworks are not shown on screen, the scenes filmed at the Swiss warehouse symbolize the disappearance of the works from their creators. The video highlights how the absence of these objects impacts our recollection of them and suggests that by freeing historiography from its reliance on physical objects, alternative narratives can emerge.
The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost was co-commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and École de design et haute école d’art du Valais.
