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

Past Disquiet is an archival and documentary exhibition that excavates the history of and around The International Art Exhibition for Palestine (Beirut, 1978). It proposes a speculative history of politically engaged artistic and museographic practices in the milieu of the international anti-imperialist solidarity movement of the 1970s.

An archival and documentary exhibition curated by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti, shown at MACBA from 20 February to 1 June 2015. It excavates the history of and around the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, which opened in Beirut in 1978 with around two hundred works donated by artists from some thirty countries and was later lost. The exhibition weaves testimonies and recollections with documents from private and institutional archives, mapping constellations of artists and collectives bound by political solidarities, beginning with Palestine and extending worldwide. First produced by MACBA, it was restaged at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in 2016.