Noor Abuarafeh

2017

Book, 16,8 x 13 cm, 255 p., language : English, publisher : Sharjah Art Foundation, ISBN : 978-9948-23-204-9.
Materials: ink, paper

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2029/8).

Literary synopsis

"The Earth Doesn't Tell Its Secrets" His Father Once Said is a novel that revolves around the narrator's fascination with the long-running myth of Palestine's first museum. After each attempt to visit such a museum ends in failure, each proposal seems to float between fact and fiction. "The first Palestiniam museum" has assumed different forms throughout the years - a collection with no space, a temporary room that would hold a single artwork, a museum conceived as an artwork and a museum building with no collection. After all the time spent obsessing over the museum. The narrator comes to see its future in the living rooms of family, friends and acquaintances. The novel assembles material based on collections found or inspired by people's houses.

Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice

The idea of telling a story drives Noor Abuarafeh's interest to the mix between the field of the visual arts and literature, the practice of an artist as a writer, and the novel as form of art, especially historical novels, where she can imagine the past through the evidences she detects, rather than fictionlising them. This is a method that Noor has been using in several works in the last years. She uses different media such as video installation, film essay, performance - and recently the novel.

Novel's website