Past Disquiet
dal 18/2/2015 al 31/5/2015
Segnalato da
18/2/2015
Past Disquiet
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona MACBA, Barcelona
Narratives and Ghosts from the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, 1978. A documentary and archival project centred on the research on and around the story of the exhibition. Organised by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), it was comprised of around 200 donated works from nearly 30 countries.
Curators Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti
Past Disquiet. Narratives and Ghosts from the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, 1978 is a documentary and archival exhibition centred on the research conducted on and around the story of the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, which opened in the spring of 1978 in Beirut, Lebanon at the Beirut Arab University. Organised by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), it was comprised of around 200 donated works from nearly 30 countries.
The exhibition was intended as the seed collection for a museum in exile, taking the form of an itinerant exhibition that was meant to tour worldwide until it could be repatriated to Palestine. During the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, the building where the works were stored, together with the exhibition’s archival and documentary traces, was destroyed by the Israeli military.
The history of contemporary art cannot be written exclusively through the analysis of artworks. One key historiographic discipline investigates and narrates how artworks have been taken into the sphere of public space as the space of reception. The history of exhibitions allows us to understand the role that today’s artistic production gives art within the broader context of political, media, economic and cultural conditions, or, in other words, how the values that art bestows on life are created and shared.
Aside from the more famous exhibitions held at big museums in the major cities in the West, the second half of the twentieth century also saw a flourishing of exhibitions of great significance and relevance outside the framework of museums and institutions. In many cases, the desire to create new forms of institutionality led to these initiatives falling into obscurity or to their physical or mnemonic destruction. This is an attempt to initiate a reading of another history of art, one that gathers up the yearnings and hopes of many people, from the perspective of a recent past that should not continue to be left out of the historical narratives of art.
Fadi A. Bardawil, Catherine David, Alfredo Jaar and Elias Sanbar will be at the seminar curated by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti within the context of the exhibition.
SEMINAR: PALESTINE AT / WITHOUT THE MUSEUM:
LOSS, METAPHOR AND EMANCIPATION
Friday, 20 February, 5–9 pm and Saturday, 21 February, 5–7 pm
This seminar invites intellectual and cultural historians Elias Sanbar (Palestine/France) and Fadi A. Bardawil (Lebanon/USA), curator Catherine David (France) and artist Alfredo Jaar (Chile/USA) to reflect on the key questions raised by the documentary and archival exhibition.
Organisation and production: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
Press Contact:
Head of Press Mireia Collado; Ainhoa Pernaute - Assistant: Victòria Cortés Tel: +34 93 4813356 Fax: +34 93 4124602 e-mail: press@macba.cat
Opening: Thursday 19 February 2015, 7.30 pm.
MACBA
Plaça dels Àngels, 1 08001 Barcelona
Monday to Friday 11 am - 7.30 pm
Saturday 10 am - 9 pm
Sunday and holidays 10 am - 3 pm
Closes on Tuesdays
ENTRY TICKET: 10 €
REDUCED ADMISSION PRICE (requires pr