Past Disquiet

Artists, International Solidarity, and Museums-in-Exile

Past Disquiet

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

Table of contents:

Introducing Past Disquiet
Bartomeu Marí
Anselm Franke
Joanna Mytkowska
Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti

On Past Disquiet

Transnational Solidarity Networks and Speculative Histories: 1960s-1980s
Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti

Essays / Interviews / Documents

Sliman Mansour
Interview by Mohanad Yaqubi on behalf of the editors

Prologue: The London Film Connection
Reem Shilleh and Mohanad Yaqubi

Writing the History of Modern Arab Art
Alia Nakhli

Toni Maraini
Interview by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti

For a Cultural Humanism (1977)
In the Margins of the Biennial (1978)
Interview with Farid Belkahia (1978)

Toni Maraini

Material Support: On Arab Artists’ Unions and Solidarity
Anneka Lenssen

Dream of Solidarity: Palestinian Art, JAALA, and Haryū Ichirō in the 1970s and 1980s
Nakajima Izumi

Vladimir Tamari
Interview by Rasha Salti

Lost in Translation? The Forgotten History of Exchanges between Communist Poland and the Palestine Liberation Organization
Dominika Blachnicka-Ciacek

“Art Instead of Politics”: Polish Artists “in Solidarity” with Palestine and Chile in the 1970s and 1980s
Katarzyna Matul

Seeing Near, Seeing Far: What Do Images Tell Us About Solidarity in Popular Democracies?
Jérôme Bazin

Trajectories of Solidarity in Time: The Week of Latin America in Belgrade, Students’ Cultural Center, 1977
Jelena Vesić

Solidarity and Socially Engaged Art in 1970s Italy
Sara Catenacci

The Brush and the Kalashnikov: The Political Vision of the Jeune Peinture from Paris to Beirut
Catherine Dossin

An Atypical Museum: The Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende
Caroll Yasky and Claudia Zaldívar

When Solidarity Became Art: The Museo Internacional de la Resistencia Salvador Allende (1975-90)
Elodie Lebeau

Ernest Pignon-Ernest
Interview by Rasha Salti

Gordon Metz and André Odendaal
Interview by Rasha Salti