Sumac Space
We initiated Sumac Space as a transregional platform to make exhibitions, to create a network, and facilitate dialogues among artists, curators, and research bodies from West Asia and its diasporas. In 2023, when we moved to Berlin, we acted as a bridge to the city, facilitating exchanges among the region and Berlin-based practitioners and audiences.
During the pandemic, when our early work was shaped, in exhibition and text formats, contributors addressed questions of social constraints and power, memory and archive, displacement, and the materialities of everyday life. As the pandemic restrictions were lifted, Sumac embraced a nomadic model, collaborating with individuals and cultural spaces.
In 2026, Sumac is shifting toward a research platform centered on fictions and futures in contemporary art practices. Through the publication in the Dialogues section and our Programmes, we map how artistic practices operate and can act as forms of world-building and speculative forces to challenge established narratives, envision alternative worlds, and make different futures tangible. We think of futures fictioning as a method and a generative practice. One that is politically aware, critical, and imaginative.
Sumac Space takes form through two complementary pillars: Dialogues publishes contextual and visual essays, interviews and conversations, reviews, and experimental writing. It is a textual space for polyvocality that encourages critical thinking. At the same time, Dialogues extend conversations across borders, making visible insights and relationships that might still be unseen and helping grow this Network. In parallel, through our Programmes, we curate an annual open-call exhibition and events in collaboration with cultural workers, in which these conversations and research take spatial form and are further developed.
Today, we carry this same spirit forward into our focus on fictions and futures. If you have a collaboration proposal or an idea for a contribution to the Dialogue section, we’d be happy to discuss it.
Meanwhile, we invite you to subscribe to our newsletter and become part of this connected network. We use your email address only to send you occasional updates about our network, new publications, upcoming open calls, exhibitions, and events.
Team
Davood Madadpoor was born and raised in Tehran, where he began his career as a co-researcher at the War Library. He pursued degrees in photography at the Iranian Photographers’ House and the Tehran University of Applied Sciences and Technology. Further studies in Florence led to a bachelor’s degree in visual arts and a master’s in curatorial studies from the Accademia di Belle Arti. His thesis focused on the relationship between art practices and the material reality of day-to-day life.
Until December 2022, he worked as a curatorial assistant at Villa Romana in Florence. In this capacity, he curated, assisted, and coordinated several projects, including Manifestiamo, The Tellers, The Broken Archive, Scuola Popolare I & II, and Seeds for Future Memories, among others. In October 2020, he co-founded Sumac Space, an ongoing project dedicated to contemporary art in West Asia. It addresses socio-political themes through exhibitions, dialogue, and collaboration that emphasize critical thinking in art practices.
In January 2023, he relocated to Berlin, where he continued his work aligned with Sumac Space. His research interrogates and recasts everyday events against the backdrop of a sociopolitical landscape in flux. As a curator, Davood explores this tension through narration and fiction that reconstruct the contemporary day-to-day as a mixture of origin, transition, and an unknowable future. (April 2025)
Pariya Ferdos[se] is a curator, researcher, writer, and architect who works between Tehran and Istanbul. She holds two bachelor’s degrees in computer science from the University of Tehran and architecture from Eastern Mediterranean University and Soore University. Additionally, she earned a diploma in Interior Architecture from the TAFE Institute in Australia. From 2018 to 2021, she was a co-researcher on the Human, All Too Human project at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM).
With a multidisciplinary academic foundation and a strong familiarity with mathematics, architecture, philosophy, history, and art, she brings an interdisciplinary approach to her research, curatorial practice, and spatial design. Between 2016 and 2023, Pariya served as an art director and co-founded three galleries in Tehran—Baharestan, Rischee 29, and Yafteh. She has curated and managed various projects, including Tehran Trilogy (2017–2018) and (Me)nace/mory (2022). Melancholia I (2023).
Her current areas of research include contemporary issues related to women, the translation of knowledge into tangible experiences, the incorporation of multisensory (synesthetic) elements into the perception of art, the use of language as a tool for thought and artistic expression, and the integration of time-consciousness into curatorial design. (April 2025)
Sumac Space has the pleasure of collaborating with people whose spirit and insight we deeply respect and admire. Whether contributing as artists, curators, researchers, or authors, these individuals are essential to shaping our platform. We see this not just as a workspace, but as a slow, yet lasting, organically growing Network.
