Sumac Space
We initiated Sumac Space as a platform to make exhibitions, build a network, and facilitate dialogues among artists, curators, and research bodies from West Asia and its diasporas. In 2023, when we moved to Berlin, continuing this work from a new location added another layer, connecting 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 curated Programmes, we map how artistic practices operate 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. The first is Dialogues, which publishes contextual and visual essays, interviews and conversations, reviews, and experimental writing. It is a textual space that encourages critical thinking. At the same time, Dialogues extends conversations across borders, making visible insights and relationships that might still be unseen and helping to grow this network. The second pillar is our Programmes, an extension of the Dialogues section, through which we curate open calls, exhibitions and events in collaboration with artists, curators, and researchers, each one a way of developing and testing the questions at the centre of our work.
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 Dialogues 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. You can unsubscribe at any time by using the link included in every email.
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, organically growing, lasting network.
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 in the context of artist residency.
Until December 2022, he worked as a curator and project coordinator 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, a space to navigate the art practices of West Asia and its diasporas via programmes and dialogues that emphasize critical thinking in art. In January 2023, he relocated to Berlin, where he continued his work as independent curator and researcher aligned with Sumac Space, exploring contemporary art via sci-fi and speculative futures.
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.