About
Sumac Space launched in October 2020 as a non-profit platform focused on contemporary art from the Middle East* through online and in-situ programs. We collaborate with artists, curators, and research bodies who address contemporary urgencies in the context of the challenging socio-political circumstances of the region.
Alongside exploring our programs, such as online and in-situ Exhibitions, Sumac Space invites viewers to explore its digitally-accessible Artists’ Rooms and Dialogues, the core pillars that shape and define the entirety of Sumac Space.
Artists’ Rooms are digital spaces curated by the artists themselves, allowing audiences to explore their thinking processes and research beyond the final artworks. We believe that art practice is so much more than final works; therefore, we aim to disclose what is formative and proliferates artists’ practice on different levels. If Artists’ Rooms is primarily a space for viewing and contemplating relations between different artefacts and subjects, Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space.
We believe in the work of art in re-imagining and shaping our pasts, presents, and futures, asserting that they must have a platform for research and diverse forms of expression. As we progressively build a community of artists, curators, researchers, and writers gravitating around the region, we welcome diverse voices to actively participate in forming Sumac Space. We propose collaboration and fostering a sense of shared and collective ownership, not as mere themes or theoretical concepts but as unconditional ways of working.
* The geographical term Middle East is not neutral; it is a Eurocentric word with colonial origins.
contact@sumac.space
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Sumac Space e.V., represented by the executive board:
Davood Madadpoor
Katharina Ehrl (until Nov. 2022)
Geschäftsnummer: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg VR 41194 B
Steuernummer: 27/647/00262
Sumac Space has had the privilege of collaborating with and receiving support from people whose spirit, passion, and knowledge we sincerely appreciate. Below is our operative team—a hybrid group of core members working across locations, roles, and capacities. Learn more about our broader network of Contributors here.
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 the Middle East. 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.
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.