Open Space - April 2026: On Being Iranian: A letter on the challenges to/of selfhood under totalising political conditions

13 April 2026 
Overview
5.30pm - 7.00pm BST/ UTC +1 To attend, please email melissa@theinterpersonal.com for the Zoom link. You don't need to be a member to attend Open Space sessions.

On Being Iranian: A letter on the challenges to/of selfhood under totalising political conditions

 

In this Open Space session, Arts activist, scholar and practitioner Dr Vali Mahlouji shares a letter, recently submitted to Art Monthly magazine, concerning the difficulty of experiencing a sense of Iranian selfhood given the history of totalitarianism through which he, like other Iranian citizens, has been challenged to make a life. The critical value of art and culture as means of collectively processing trauma and of expressing the pluralist diversity through which being and selfhood can be experienced, felt and actualised is discussed.

 

We will begin with a reading of the letter itself, then allow our conversation to unfold from there, before writing into the space that is created in response.

 

Biography

 

Dr Vali Mahlouji is a cultural historian, curator, and founder of Archaeology of the Final Decade (AOTFD), a non-profit, research and art-historical platform that excavates and exposes erased, disappeared, or violated cultural histories, championing art from the subaltern histories, especially those subjected to amnesia, disappearance, censorship, endangerment, or deliberate destruction. AOTFD advises and assists international museums, including The British Museum, Tate Modern, Victoria & Albert, Smithsonian, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, and LACMA, in acquiring artworks. AOTFD’s projects have created the first Iranian artist room at Tate Modern and earned a nomination for the Whitechapel Gallery at the Global Fine Arts Awards 2015. It has collaborated with UNESCO initiatives and the Nobel Peace Exhibition.

 

Mahlouji has curated exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery (London), Musée d’Art Moderne (Paris), MAXXI Museum (Rome), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), Dhaka Art Summit, Garage Museum (Moscow), Sursock Museum (Beirut), and Asia Cultural Centre (Gwangju), Photo London, and The Ragged School Museum. He lectures widely across academies, including The Courtauld Institute of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, Stanford University, Lahore Literary Festival, City University, New York and many others. As an academic and essayist, his interests are in archival practice and the ethics of representation in modern art.

 

Mahlouji founded Queer Liberation Collective (QLC) in 2023 to advocate for Iranian LGBTQIA+ rights. He represented Iranian LGBTQIA+ at the House of Commons (26.09.2023) and the House of Lords (18.09.2023). QLC campaigns to decriminalise and repeal Chapter 2 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code that codifies the death penalty for homosexuality.

 

Mahlouji’s upcoming title, “Recreating the Citadel”, will be published by Hadje Kantz Gallery, Berlin, in 2026.