Changing Narratives - Creative Voices from the Global South

Nissrin Zaptia

Changing Narratives is a podcast featuring in depth conversations with artists, architects, designers, and cultural practitioners shaping contemporary culture across the Global South. Hosted by Nissrin Zaptia the podcast explores the ideas, experiences, and places that inform their work. Each episode offers thoughtful, personal conversations that move beyond headlines and dominant narratives, creating space for voices and perspectives rarely represented in mainstream cultural media. Season One was co-hosted by Giovanna Dunmall

Episodes

  1. Mar 3

    Noor Abuarafeh on Archives, Power and Who Gets to Write History

    In today’s episode of Changing Narratives, we speak with Palestinian visual artist Noor Abuarafeh, whose work examines memory, history and the archive. Noor talks about tracing absences and questioning how history is shaped, constructed and understood, particularly when records are incomplete, inaccessible or simply do not exist. We focus on several of her works, including Observational Desire on a Memory that Remains, a short film that begins with a group photograph taken at an exhibition opening in Jerusalem in 1985. Fourteen artists stand together. One of them, Saqr Al Qatil, becomes the narrator of a work that gradually unfolds as an act of resistance against forgetting. In researching the film, Noor found no comprehensive Palestinian art archive covering the period before 1993, the year the Oslo Accords were signed. Through contact with Al Qatil’s family and friends, she began reconstructing a visual record of his life and work. Tracing his story became a way of revisiting a wider artistic moment in Jerusalem that had largely gone undocumented. In reconstructing one life, the work also raises larger questions about who records cultural memory, how it is labelled and what happens when those records disappear. Those questions feel particularly relevant now. In 2026, the British Museum removed the word “Palestine” from some maps and explanatory panels in its ancient Middle East galleries, saying the terminology was historically inaccurate or no longer neutral, a decision that has itself become the subject of public dispute. Subscribe on Substack or follow Changing Narratives wherever you listen to podcasts. Instagram: @changingnarrativesthepodcast Substack: https://globalsouthcreatives.substack.com/

    Noor Abuarafeh on Archives, Power and Who Gets to Write History

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Changing Narratives is a podcast featuring in depth conversations with artists, architects, designers, and cultural practitioners shaping contemporary culture across the Global South. Hosted by Nissrin Zaptia the podcast explores the ideas, experiences, and places that inform their work. Each episode offers thoughtful, personal conversations that move beyond headlines and dominant narratives, creating space for voices and perspectives rarely represented in mainstream cultural media. Season One was co-hosted by Giovanna Dunmall