Elham Puriya Mehr

Curator-in-Residence

In residency January 2nd to 31st, 2024

Elham Puriya Mehr, image courtesy of the curator.

We invite you to join and dive into the heart of coffeehouse culture by participating in Coffeehouselabs events at Griffin Art Project throughout January 2024. Curated by Elham Puriya Mehr, this four-week residency delves into Puriya Mehr's curatorial research The Third Space: The Affective Atmosphere of Coffeehouses. She positions coffeehouses on the border of fiction and non-fiction to encourage our imagination about the abilities of these social spaces for the not-yet. The research concentrates on the potentialities of 'joy' and 'collective conversation' against the biopolitics of 'happiness' defined by capitalism.

Sunday, January 14, from 1 pm - 2:30 pm (In person at Griffin Art Projects)

Friday, January 19, from 11 am - 12:30 pm (Online via Zoom)

Sunday, January 28, from 2 pm - 4 pm (In person at Delany’s Coffeehouse, Denman St)

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, and her Postdoctoral at Advanced Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on the potentiality of ‘study’ and ‘learning’ in social spaces in order to think about new vocabularies, new practices, and new knowledge beyond bodies of disciplinary inherited knowledge.

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.

Elham Puriya Mehr wishes to thank the Canada Council for their support of her residency project.