A Trip to the Gallery: Tour of: A Geography of Siege — curated by Vali Mahlouji
A Geography of Siege — curated by Vali Mahlouji
Join psychotherapist and researcher Melissa Dunlop as she walks through A Geography of Siege with curator Vali Mahlouji. Presented at the Ragged School Museum, London, as part of PhotoMonth London 2026, the exhibition brings together photography and moving-image works by Jananne Al-Ani, Edmund Clark, Tarlan Lotfizadeh, Goshka Macuga RA, Vali Mahlouji, Tahmineh Monzavi, Simon Moretti and Hrair Sarkissian.
The exhibition considers siege beyond the territorial condition of war: as a narrowing of possibility that can inhabit language, intimacy, architecture, memory and the structures of everyday life. It asks how violence continues to act after the event itself has passed, and how images are made within—not outside—such conditions.
This Zoom event brings curator and psychotherapist into dialogue as they contemplate the works and their meanings, and consider how the condition of being under siege acts upon inner experience, sensation and our relations with others.
The tour will last approximately 30 minutes, followed by an opportunity for those present on Zoom to respond to the works and conversation verbally, in writing and/or through imagery.
Date: Friday 16th October 2026
Time: 3.15–4.45pm UK time
Place: Zoom
Biographies
Dr Melissa Dunlop's psychotherapeutic, supervisory, research and advisory practices are influenced by and oriented round her engagement in creative, relational, speculative, posthuman, psychoanalytic and psychosocial theories and practices. She is a strong proponent of collaboration, especially spontaneous acts of talking, writing and moving together as modes of relational inquiry, and as means of supporting and enabling insightful dialogue between diverse fields or people with different ways of thinking. She is a steering committee member of CANI-Net, the Collaborative Artful Narrative Inquiry Network, has a PhD from the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry, University of Edinburgh, and is currently writing a book about her collaborative adventures.
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.