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I remember the first time I felt that my name wasn’t enough. I was five years old, in kindergarten, when one of the children said the word “abda” [female slave]. I did not understand its meaning, but I understood what it did. It placed me in a lower position and gave my body a name that preceded me. Difference wasn’t meant to be discovered, but to be used. In that moment, I learned that language was not merely employed to describe; it was imposed.
During those years, I saw a woman dressed entirely in black, walking at night. Her steps weren't heavy; she seemed to slide through space. I could neither grasp her, nor classify her. She stood beyond comprehension, and that's what made her powerful. She frightened me at first, yet she remained in my memory as a suggestion of what’s possible: an irreducible body, a presence that does not need to be explained.
School didn't offer me answers. The body wasn't presented as a space to be understood, but rather to be controlled. I was told what to hide, without explaining why. That's how I came to the realization that knowledge could be withheld, and that the body could be controlled without ever being understood.
With time, I learned to deal with my own appearance. I no longer appear fully, nor do I disappear completely. I control what is seen and what remains unseen. Not out of fear, but out of a consciousness that every act of appearance exposes me to scrutiny.
When I arrived in Jerusalem in 2018, this situation became even more acute. The question wasn't just about place, but about color as well. Gazes lingered longer than necessary, and questions were unspoken yet unmistakably present. Every encounter became an attempt at interpretation. Identity was no longer something I lived, but something I was asked to explain. My body became a subject of daily examination.
In response to this, I chose not to explain myself further, but to stop. To draw a boundary.
Opacity in this case does not mean disappearance.
It is a decision.
To exist, without opening the floor for interpretation.
Roba Alfaraouna is a visual artist working across photography and sound, from the south of Palestine, born in 1995. Her work explores the relationship between body, space, and voice, with a focus on how visibility and opacity are shaped within controlled and surveilled environments.
Through image, sound, and installation, she investigates the limits of representation and resists fixed readings of identity. Her practice draws on women’s voices, landscape, and embodied memory, questioning how the body is seen, categorized, and interpreted.
She has exhibited her work in Palestine and internationally, and her practice moves between photography, sound-based research, and spatial installations.
Roba Alfaraouna is a visual artist working across photography and sound, from the south of Palestine, born in 1995. Her work explores the relationship between body, space, and voice, with a focus on how visibility and opacity are shaped within controlled and surveilled environments.
Through image, sound, and installation, she investigates the limits of representation and resists fixed readings of identity. Her practice draws on women’s voices, landscape, and embodied memory, questioning how the body is seen, categorized, and interpreted.
She has exhibited her work in Palestine and internationally, and her practice moves between photography, sound-based research, and spatial installations.
