Elham Puriya Mehr

Elham Puriya Mehr (Iran-Canada) is an independent curator and lecturer based in Vancouver on the territories of the xwməθkwəýəm (Musqueam), skwxwu7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. She received her BA and MA from Tehran University of Art, her Ph.D. in Art Research from Alzahra University in Tehran, and now is a postdoc research fellow at Advanced Practice in Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on ‘learning’ in social contexts, curation of social spaces, and researching through curatorial. She has worked internationally as an educator, curator, and writer over the past seventeen years, and lectured in conferences, symposia, and talks in international contexts. She is a co-founder of Empty Space Studio, a non-profit nomadic platform based in Tehran and Vancouver.

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The Spectral Infrastructures of Coffeehouses

This curatorial research residency in the AiR Trieste concentrates on coffeehouses as a social space by raising questions such as how the cultural potentialities of coffeehouses activate the space of collective learning and what are the spectral infrastructures of these spaces. This performative research which will be realized through the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the AiR Trieste’s team will focus on researching infrastructures, interviews, curator talks, and collecting archival materials.