Biography
Working in a wide range of mediums that include drawing and performance, Jumana Emil Abboud attempts to pose questions related to memory as read through the body, through folklores and folktales, through home and homeland, and through cultural ritual or practice. Questions pertinent to her practice include those such as: How is history (personal and collective) told and retold and how does it affect or impose on one’s present time/life? How do we remember and how does memory fragmentation leave its imprints?
Abboud is interested in storytelling practices associated with fairytales, myths, icons and archetypes, as well as language, both as a visual and textual tool, and the transferring of mythical archetypes through artistic practice. In 2010 she began researching Palestinian folklore, myth and superstition, motivated by religious or supernatural iconography. This source of inspiration stems from the artist’s own upbringing within a Palestinian environment - sheltered with faith and folkloric activity, yet juxtaposed against the harsh realities of occupation. Thus, her work process, a sort of re-visitation or re-claiming, and a personal journey of sorts, attempts to extract the genealogy of tales that form a protective shell in order to free ourselves from the predicaments of daily life.
