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.
contact@sumac.space
Instagram / Facebook
* The geographical term Middle East is not neutral; it is a Eurocentric word with colonial origins.
Sumac Space e.V., represented by the executive board:
Davood Madadpoor
Katharina Ehrl (until Nov. 2022)
Geschäftsnummer: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg VR 41194 B
Steuernummer: 06470/08333
Davood Madadpoor, b. 1981, Tehran Iran.
Davood was born and raised in Tehran, where he began his career at the War Library as a co-researcher on methods of archiving. His interests in the arts led him to pursue degrees in photography at the Iranian Photographers’ House and the Tehran University of Applied Sciences and Technology.
He furthered his studies in Florence, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in visual arts and a master’s degree in curatorial studies from the Accademia di Belle Arti. Here, he cultivated and explored his curatorial interests in the relationship between art practices and the material reality of day-to-day life, graduating with a thesis focused on local context as an impetus and inspiration for the art practices of artists-in-residence.
Until December 2022, he worked as a curatorial assistant at Villa Romana in Florence. In this capacity, he co-curated and assisted several projects, including Manifestiamo, The Tellers, The Broken Archive, Scuola Popolare I & II, and Seeds for Future Memories, among others. He co-founded Sumac Space in October 2020, an ongoing project dedicated to art practices of the Middle East, addressing sociopolitical themes through exhibitions, dialogue, and collaboration that emphasizes critical thinking in art practices. In January 2023, he relocated to Berlin, where he continued his work, developing and contributing to various projects including Echoes, au-delà, and Generative Encounters.
The rest of his time is devoted to developing his research, aligned with Sumac Space, which revolves around interrogating and recasting everyday events against the contemporary backdrop of a sociopolitical landscape in flux. As a curator, Davood seeks to explore this tension in his projects through narration and fiction that reconstruct the contemporary day-to-day as a mixture of origin, transition, and an unknowable future.