Rasha Salti
Rasha Salti (born 1969, Toronto) is a researcher, writer, producer, and curator of art and film. She lives and works between Beirut and Berlin. Salti co-curated many film programs at public institutions, including ArteEast, Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and collaborated with film festivals as a programmer, such as the Abu Dhabi International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. Since 2017, she is the commissioning editor for La Lucarne at ArteFrance, a program dedicated to Auteur documentaries. Her curatorial projects were exhibited at numerous international public institutions, including Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende in Santiago de Chile, the Sursock Museum in Beirut. She has co-curated several film programs, including Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema from the 1960s until Now (2010–2012), with Jytte Jensen, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). In 2010, she was one of the co-curators of the tenth edition of the Sharjah Biennial.
Past Disquiet (2025) at Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: © Maarten Nauw / Framer Framed
Rasha Salti, together with Kristine Khouri, is researchers and curator of Past Disquiet, a long-term research project that began in 2008 and has transformed into a documentary and archival exhibition series that has been exhibited internationally since 2015. The show was hosted at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) (2015), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2016), the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA) in Santiago de Chile (2018), the Sursock Museum (2018), Palais de Tokyo (2024) in Paris, and Framer Framed (2025) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Past Disquiet traces its research to four forgotten ‘museums in solidarity’: the International Art Exhibition for Palestine (Lebanon, 1978), the Museum of Latin American Art in Solidarity with Nicaragua, the International Museum of the Resistance Salvador Allende, and Art Contre/Against Apartheid. These initiatives were intended as acts of solidarity, supporting the liberation struggles of the Palestinian people, the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, rejecting the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa. Curators Khouri and Salti’s research journey followed threads from Beirut, Paris, Rome, Rabat, Baghdad, Tokyo, Venice, Santiago, Managua, Cape Town and Amsterdam, back and forth. Their investigation uncovered thousands of intersecting stories of visionaries who organised exhibitions, intervened in public spaces, and created a particular form of museum as an embodiment of their causes. Through compelling archival materials – documents, photographs, pamphlets, press clippings, posters, interviews and videos – the exhibition brings this shared counter-history of art practice and political mobilisation to light.
Salti’s articles and essays have appeared in The Jerusalem Quarterly Report, Naqd, MERIP, The London Review of Books, Afterall, and Third Text, as well as several anthologies dedicated to film, art and culture. In 2018, she co-edited with Kristine Khouri, Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity and Museums in Exile, published by the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw. In 2011 and 2012, she acted as the guest-editor of the Manifesta Journal for issues number 14, 15, and 16. In 2010, she co-edited I Would Have Smiled: A Tribute to Myrtle Winter-Chaumeny with Issam Nassar, a book dedicated to the legacy of the founder of the UNRWA. In 2009, she collaborated with photographer Ziad Antar on an exhibition and book titled Beirut Bereft, The Architecture of the Forsaken and Map of the Derelict. In 2006, she edited Insights into Syrian Cinema: Essays and Conversations with Filmmakers (ArteEast and Rattapallax Press).
Source: Wikipedia
Exhibitions
Exhibition: Past Disquiet
Curated by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti, this documentary and archival exhibition uncovers a largely forgotten history of politically engaged artists and initiatives
Agenda
Finissage: Past Disquiet
On Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 May, Framer Framed concludes the exhibition Past Disquiet with a full weekend programme
Film screening: Past Disquiet at Het Documentaire Paviljoen
On 11 May at Het Documentaire Paviljoen, curator Rasha Salti presents two films to accompany the exhibition Past Disquiet
