Kristine Khouri: Future Platform(s) around Modern Art in the Arab World: Sources and Footnotes

Kristine Khouri  is an independent researcher and writer whose research interests focus on histories of arts circulation and infrastructure in the Arab world, archival practices and knowledge dissemination. Together with Rasha Salti, she is co-founder of History of Arab Modernities in the Visual Arts Study Group, a research platform focused on the social history of art in the Arab world. Their current work is centered on the history of the International Art Exhibition for Palestine that opened in Beirut in 1978, and has been displayed through their archival and documentary exhibition, Past Disquiet, shown at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2015), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2016), the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago (2018), and Sursock Museum, Beirut (2018). She and Salti also co-edited the volume Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity and Museums in Exile (Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018). Khouri also curated The Founding Years (1969–1973): A Selection of Works from the Sultan Gallery Archives at the Sultan Gallery, Kuwait (2012), and continues to work on the Sultan Gallery archives in collaboration with the gallery. She co-led a Digitizing Archives workshop with Sabih Ahmed of the Asia Art Archive in Kuwait as part of Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum (2015) and co-organized the Digital Methodologies workshop at marra.tein (Beirut, 2017). Khouri has also collaborated as a researcher with artists Joanna Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige, and Walid Raad, as well as with various regional arts institutions as a writer and researcher, and as a project consultant for projects such as the Young Arab Theater Fund’s Meeting Points Festival, the Sharjah Art Foundation, Ashkal Alwan, the Saradar Collection, the Sultan Gallery Archives, and the Sursock Museum. She has contributed texts to The Road to Peace (Beirut, 2009), as well as to several publications, including Bidoun, The National (Abu Dhabi), the Art Asia Pacific Almanac, Global Art Forum 6: The Medium of Media’s publication TL; DR, Some Medium Stories (2012). She was a section editor for the publication accompanying the exhibition Time Is Out of Joint (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2016) and contributed texts to Labour of Love (Palestinian Museum, 2018), Seta Manoukian (Saradar Collection/Kaph Books, Beirut, 2019), Hamed Abdalla, Arabécédaire (Zamân Books, Paris, 2018). She is currently focusing her energy on building networked digital archives and mapping existing resources on the subject of modern art in the Arab world via sources and footnotes, considering working within and outside institutions, and through the web. Khouri is also a member of the board of the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut.