Narratives from Palestine
Screening and Discussion with the Artists Shuruq Harb and Lara Salous
Free, until full capacity is reached
This encounter welcomes screenings of films by Shuruq Harb (Ramallah, 1980), Shereen Abdel-Karim Hassanein (Gaza City, 1996) and Lara Salous (Ramallah, 1988), three Palestinian multidisciplinary artists that are part of the Tadafuq project, which provides artistic training and mentoring online for Palestinian creatives from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem. The initiative has been developed by artist and curator Nicolás Combarro since 2020.
Alongside the film screenings is a conversation between Harb and Salous, accompanied by Sara Buraya Boned (Museo Reina Sofía), as they reflect on their experience as Palestinian women artists from a feminist perspective, exploring the possibilities of disseminating the Palestinian cause through their art-making, work which is punctuated by their ideas, desires and personal hopes.
From these artists’ different gazes on the living conditions in Palestinian regions sprout narratives around questions of identity, violence, memory and mental health to put forward new poetics about territories that form an alternative to the patriarchal and warmongering geopolitical vision.
Credits
Shuruq Harb. The Jump
Palestine, 2021, colour, original version with Spanish subtitles, DA, 10’
Shereen Abdel-Karim Hassanein. The Face of the City
Palestine, 2023, colour, original version with Spanish subtitles, DA, 11’. Produced by Tadafuq
Lara Salous. Around our Hands
Palestine, 2023, colour, original version with Spanish subtitles, DA, 7’
Participants
Sara Buraya Boned is head of the Museo Reina Sofía’s Tentacular Museum area.
Shuruq Harb is an artist, educator, film-maker and writer from Ramallah, in the West Bank, where she is currently based. Focusing on digital audiovisual culture online, Harb looks for subversive routes to circulate images. She has participated in solo and collective shows at the Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2012), the New Museum (New York, 2014), the Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan, 2017) and the Busan Biennale (South Korea, 2024), among others. She is currently in Madrid participating in an artist’s residency at the Casa de Velázquez, inside the framework of the TEJA network’s residency programme, and has also been a mentor on the Tadafuq programme.
Shereen Abdel-Karim Hassanein is an architect and visual artist with a degree in Architecture from the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). The beginnings of her artistic career were self-taught, and she also participated in the Tadafuq programme, under the mentorship of artist Shuruq Harb. She has participated in local exhibitions in the Gaza Strip, her work exploring the process to produce and represent space for the purposes of addressing social issues via architectural abstractions.
Lara Salous is an architect, interior designer and artist from Ramallah, in the West Bank, where she is currently based. She studied Architectural Engineering at Birzeit University (Ramallah) and holds an MA in Interior Design from the University of Westminster (London). She participates in the Tadafuq programme, with her work rooted in traditional Palestinian handicrafts, particularly the use of wool and its applications in contemporary design. Thus, Salous traces the relationships between natural resources and the past and present of Palestinian culture and heritage.