Past Disquiet is a documentary and archival exhibition based on research conducted by the curators for over a decade around four seed collections of art that were intended to be “museums in solidarity” or “museums in exile”, that incarnated the engagement of artists with a particular political cause. It is an exhibition of stories, told with documents, photographs, pamphlets, press clippings, posters, interviews, and videos.

The research began as the two curators explored how the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, which took place in Beirut (Lebanon) in 1978 and was meant to become the nucleus for a museum in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle. Despite the size and scope of the exhibition, yet unprecedented for the region, it seems to have been totally forgotten. The story of that museum was closely connected to other similar collections and initiatives, namely, the International Museum of The Resistance ‘Salvador Allende’, the Artists Contre/Against Apartheid, and Art for the People of Nicaragua. Their reconstructed stories trace complex and intersecting networks, and rarely explored history of politically engaged artists mobilized in different modes around the causes inscribed in the tri-continental international anti-imperialist solidarity movement of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, such as the opposition to the Vietnam War, the rejection of the Pinochet dictatorship and of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, and in support of the Palestinian struggle.