.jpg)
Post-Event Report: The Fourth Tehran Curatorial Symposium
What We Learn When Systems Fail: Alternative Models of Knowing and Curating
10–12 May 2025 | Charsoo Honar: Didar Gallery, Tehran | Live-streamed via mohit.art
As the curator of the Tehran Curatorial Symposium, I’m delighted to share reflections on what was a three-day gathering marked by rich discussions and meaningful exchanges titled What We Learn When Systems Fail: Alternative Models of Knowing and Curating. Hosted by Charsoo Honar at Didar Gallery in Tehran and live-streamed via mohit.art, this edition explored how curatorial and educational practices respond to — and are shaped by — political pressures and socially critical conditions, with a particular focus on Iran.
Whether you joined us in person, tuned in online, or are catching up now, I hope this report offers a glimpse into the depth and generosity of what was shared.
This year’s symposium focused on alternative models of education and knowledge making, especially in contexts where formal institutions are limited or complicit. We explored the potential of independent initiatives, curatorial practices, and artistic research as pedagogical tools and sites of resistance. Central themes included revolutionary and feminist pedagogies, community-based and collective knowledge practices, the pitfalls of “presentism” in contemporary art discourse, and the crisis of curating as both a method and an institutional structure.
Shahrzad Mojab (Professor Emerita, Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, and the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto), on Learning, Art, and Critical Consciousness in the Process of Revolutionary Change, presented at the Tehran Curatorial Symposium #4, at Didar Art Gallery, on Saturday, 10 May 2025.image credit: Didar Art Gallery
We began with Mehdi Ansari’s provocation on the fallacy of presentism — a pressing crisis that hinders deeper exploration of the curatorial field. Shahrzad Mojab carried the conversation further with a powerful reflection on what it means to be critical, framing education as a radical and emancipatory act.
Mina Keshavarz’s documentary The Art of Living in Danger offered a moving invitation to consider personal and activist narratives as integral to educational models — narratives too often excluded from dominant institutional frameworks.
Fereshte Moosavi in conversation with filmmaker Mina Keshavarz following the screening of The Art of Living in Danger, at the Tehran Curatorial Symposium #4, at Didar Art Gallery, on Saturday, 10 May 2025. image credit: Didar Art Gallery
On Day Two, we shifted focus toward embodied and site-specific practice. Elham Puriya Mehr led us through the city’s hidden infrastructures, asking what it means to learn with space rather than simply about it. Viviana Checchia invited us to dive underwater — metaphorically and methodologically — as we explored situated epistemologies and their transformative potential in curatorial thinking. The day concluded with Hannah Jacobi’s deeply personal story of how an individual question sparked a transcultural curatorial initiative shaped by care, courage, and curiosity.
Elham Puriya Mehr (Curator & Lecturer), on Social Spaces as an Atmosphere of Knowledge Making, presented at the Tehran Curatorial Symposium #4, at Didar Art Gallery, on Sunday, 11 May 2025. image credit: Didar Art Gallery
Viviana Checchia (Director of Void Art Centre & Co-Director of Vessel), on Commoning Epistemologies, presented at the Tehran Curatorial Symposium #4, at Didar Art Gallery, on Sunday, 11 May 2025. image credit: Didar Art Gallery
Hannah Jacobi (Art Historian, Author, Curator, and Co-Director of mohit.art), on mohit.art: Navigating the Transcultural Space, presented at the Tehran Curatorial Symposium #4, at Didar Art Gallery, on Sunday, 11 May 2025. image credit: Didar Art Gallery
Helmut Draxler (Art Historian, Curator, Professor Emeritus of Art Theory at the Merz Academy, Stuttgart), on Discursive Knowledge, in conversation with Fereshte Moosavi, presented at the Tehran Curatorial Symposium #4, at Didar Art Gallery, on Monday, 12 May 2025. image credit: Didar Art Gallery
On the final day, I had the pleasure of speaking with Helmut Draxler about the notion of crisis — not only as the condition in which curating often operates, but as something internal to the curatorial act itself.
This edition also marked the soft launch of The Curatorial, in Other Words — a book I have been developing over several years as a curatorial proposition in its own right. I was joined by Saeed Ravanbakhsh, the founder and director of Charsoo Honar, the publisher of the book, and Elham Puriya Mehr, one of its contributing authors, to reflect on its process and the many challenges we encountered along the way. The book brings together multiple curatorial voices, tensions, and affinities — many of which resonated throughout the symposium’s conversations.
I want to extend my deepest thanks to Charsoo Honar as co-founder of the Tehran Curatorial Symposium and its dedicated team, who hosted this symposium with such care and professionalism. As an independent institution navigating significant challenges, their unwavering commitment and belief in the urgency of this work were essential. Their behind-the-scenes efforts shaped every detail of the event and made it possible for this gathering to happen in the way that it did.
I am also incredibly grateful to mohit.art for their collaboration in enabling wide online access to the talks and discussions, helping to extend the reach of these conversations well beyond the physical venue.
Finally, heartfelt thanks to all the speakers, contributors, and participants for your presence, your insight, and your generosity. The reflections and questions you brought continue to reverberate — and will no doubt inform our practices moving forward.
With appreciation,
Fereshte Moosavi
Independent Curator & Educator
Co-Founder, Tehran Curatorial Symposium
June 2025, London
