Past Disquiet

Artists, International Solidarity, and Museums-in-Exile

Edited by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018
375 pages + insert, English
69 illustrations
ISBN 978-83-64177-44-6
Price: 25 €

Available at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, at bookstores and via the publishing house

Table of contents

The 1970s saw artists, curators, and militants gathering international collections of art, donated by artists, that traveled to established museums, galleries, and community spaces. These museums-in-exile were intended to incarnate the solidarity of artists with political causes and mobilize a wider public. The publication Past Disquiet explores the histories of three such museums, plumbing the networks of artists who worked together to make them a reality. Starting with the forgotten International Art Exhibition for Palestine, the research uncovered a global map of artists protesting the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and the apartheid regime in South Africa, and supporting liberation struggles including that of the Palestinian people and the Sandinista revolution.

The publication builds on research undertaken by the editors Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti in the framework of the exhibition Past Disquiet. In 2015 that exhibition was shown at MACBA, in Barcelona; in 2016 at HKW, in Berlin; and in 2018 at MSSA, in Santiago de Chile, and the Sursock Museum, in Beirut.

With contributions by Jérôme Bazin, Dominika Blachnicka-Ciacek, Sara Catenacci, Catherine Dossin, Anselm Franke, Kristine Khouri Rasha Salti, Elodie Lebeau, Anneka Lenssen, Sliman Mansour, Maeda Rei, Toni Maraini, Bartomeu Marí, Katarzyna Matul, Gordon Metz & André Odendaal, Joanna Mytkowska, Nakajima Izumi, Alia Nakhli, Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Reem Shilleh & Mohanad, Yaqubi, Vladimir Tamari, Jelena Vesić, Caroll Yasky, Claudia Zaldívar

Mar 18–May 9, 2016

Past Disquiet

Narratives and Ghosts from the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, 1978

In the 1970s, artists across the world mobilized around anti-imperialist solidarity movements. Departing from the 1978 International Art Exhibition for Palestine in Beirut, Past Disquiet stitches a speculative history of networks: grassroots collectives across Paris, Rome, and Tokyo; artists’ unions in Damascus, Casablanca, Berlin, and Warsaw; biennials in Venice, Baghdad, and Rabat, and museums in Santiago de Chile, Cape Town, and Managua. Curated by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti, the exhibition engages the problematics of oral history while critically exploring the mechanisms of canon-making.

Past Disquiet

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Past Disquiet