Talk

Past Disquiet: Panels

A discursive programme by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti

Tal al-Zaatar painting intervention and *Mostra Palestina* [Palestine Exhibition] in San Giovanni Valdarno and Montevarchi, 1976, featuring informational material about Palestine and two paintings by Claude Lazar, one of which one was later donated to the collection of Museo International de la Resistencia Salvador Allende (MIRSA), and the other to the *International Art Exhibition for Palestine*. Courtesy: Sergio Traquandi.

Date and Time:: Thursday 5 – Saturday 7 Feb 2026
Various times
Location:: Majlis

Taking place over three days, these panels consider the histories of solidarity and the arts in the UK linked to the four transnational struggles explored in Past Disquiet.

Panel 1: Festivals and Exhibitions in London

Thursday 5 February, 6:30-8:00pm

This panel focuses on the institutional practices of cultural spaces in London in the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, it will look at the festivals and exhibitions which took place in response to the Pinochet dictatorship and the Palestinian struggle.

Speakers: To be confirmed shortly.

Panel 2: Solidarity for Chile and Nicaragua in the UK

Friday 6 February, 6:30-8:00pm

Focused on the work of artists and activists in the UK in support of Nicaragua and against the dictatorship in Chile, this panel pays attention to mural production and other cultural and artistic practices in the UK in the period of the mid-late 1970s and 1980s.

Speakers: Sebastian Bustamente, Holly Eva Ryan

Panel 3: Publishing and Archiving Movements and Struggles

Saturday 7 February, 3:30-5pm

This panel focuses on the production of archives around the Free Palestine publication and the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives. It will centre on the work of building archives and participating in movements, and look at the development of resources and tools to preserve and study the history of liberation struggles.

Speakers: Christabel Gurney, Rami Rmeileh, Sorcha Thomson

Rasha Salti is a researcher, writer, producer, and curator of art and film. She lives in Marseille.

Kristine Khouri is a researcher with a background in Arab cultural history and art history. Her interests focus on the history of art circulation, collection, exhibition, and infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as archival practice and knowledge dissemination.

Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti are researchers and curators of Past Disquiet, a long-term research project that began in 2008 and was transformed into a documentary and archival exhibition that has been exhibited internationally seven times since 2015. They are also co-editors of Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity, and Museums in Exile, (2018).

Sebastian Bustamante-Brauning is an artist, writer and curator specialising in photography and art from Latin America. Sebastian holds an AHRC funded PhD focused on digital memory platforms, and cultural and visual studies from Latin America (University of Bristol). He was the Assistant Director of the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (2016-2018). His research interests include photography, museology, art history, digital heritage, human rights and memory in Latin America and the intersections between these areas.

Dr Holly Eva Ryan is a Reader (Associate Professor) in International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. Her research sits at the intersections of global politics, social movement studies, and practical aesthetics. She examines how non-state actors use art and other forms of cultural production to imagine, demand, and enact political change. She is Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean at Queen Mary University of London and a founding member of the Artistic Activism Research Co-Lab at New York University.

Christabel Gurney was a long-time activist in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, joining the campaign to stop the all-white Springbok rugby tour in 1969. She edited the AAM’s monthly newspaper, Anti-Apartheid News, in the 1970s. She has since researched and written about the history of the AAM and runs its ‘Forward to Freedom’ website: www.aamarchives.org. She is the Secretary of the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives Committee and a member of the Advisory Council of the AAM’s successor organisation Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA).

Rami Rmeileh is a critical psychologist, researcher and critical pedagogue whose work centres Palestinian refugee histories, anti-colonial struggle, and the infrastructures of transnational solidarity. He is lead pedagogist at Makan Rights, an organiser with the European Centre for Palestine Studies, and currently completing a PhD in Middle East politics at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.

Sorcha Thomson is a historian of tricontinental solidarities and ecologies. She is a Research Fellow within the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) project at the University of East Anglia and a Teaching Fellow at SOAS and UCL. She is co-editor of the books She Who Struggles and Palestine in the World. Alongside Rami Rmeileh and Akram Salhab she has developed the digital teaching tool Free Palestine: British-Based Solidarities with the Palestinian Revolution.

Past Disquiet Programme Companion Guide

- Special Project
Past Disquiet: Excavating Solidarity in the Arts
A discursive programme by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti
Wednesday 4 – Sunday 8 Feb 2026
- Workshop
Past Disquiet: Workshops
A discursive programme by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti
Thursday 5 – Saturday 7 Feb 2026
Various times
- Film
Past Disquiet: Screenings
A discursive programme by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti
Wednesday 4 – Sunday 8 Feb 2026
11am-6pm

Past Disquiet: Panels

Related

Past Disquiet: Excavating Solidarity in the Arts

Past Disquiet: Workshops

Past Disquiet: Screenings