Cornerstone Programming

Maktaba: A Speculative Thought Circle is a monthly gathering dedicated to collective reading, viewing, and discussion across disciplines. Rooted in the Arabic word for “library,” Maktaba takes the form of an open and horizontal learning environment where participants gather around a roundtable to reflect on texts and artistic practices, from exhibitions, books, film, and image to performance and sound, considering the ways they speak to one another and what we might speculate from them.

For its third iteration of the season, Maktaba: A Speculative Thought Circle III will serve as a precursor to our Spring 2026 group exhibition, Archipelago of Whispers, curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr.

Archipelago of Whispers approaches gossip as an infrastructure for alternative knowledge-making: a constellation of islands connected through the sea, where speech and silence, fiction and truth, self and the other continuously flow into one another.

Through video, multi-channel, and sound installations, Archipelago of Whispers unfolds as a listening ecology that prioritizes sound, voice, silence, and participation – a space where communication extends beyond humans, where voices overlap and create meanings through fragmentation and distortion. Performative and participatory gestures, echoing gossip’s restless drift and continual mutation, trace how unverified words ripple outward, shaping the shared landscapes of collective imagination.

Taking inspiration from the exhibition’s nature of listening for the in-betweens, what’s in the crevices –– the vibrations and resonances that ripple outwards –– we will be exploring key texts that have shaped the lexicon of the curators in both their pedagogies and approaches to the making of this exhibition, its curiosities, its murmurs, and its resonances. The curators will hold a pedagogical session on alternative knowledge-making, share references as preparation for exploring the idea of gossip as infrastructure to offer us fertile ground to consider, negotiate, and speculate our own resonances, vibrations, and in that, our imagined futures. 

All texts and/or bodies of work for each Maktaba Circle are shared prior to our meeting. Each participant is encouraged to familiarize themselves with the material, annotate, and bring their own references and offerings to each session.

Accessibility & Participation

Open to ages 18+

No prior experience required.

Language: English

About the Moderators

Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr are two independent curators from neighboring countries, Turkey and Iran.

They both hold PhD's in curatorial studies and artistic research and met in London through the Advanced Practices Lab at Goldsmiths University, led by Irit Rogoff, where they collaborated on multiple projects.

In 2024, they started their collective research around the notion of gossip with an upcoming research residency in Turkey in June 2026, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Deniz Kirkali is an independent curator and writer from Turkey, based in London. She holds a PhD in Advanced Practices and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Kirkali is a co-founder of topsoil, a transnational curatorial and research collective, and Garp Sessions, a summer residency programme in Babakale, Turkey. Her recent curatorial projects include Whether it’s a desert or not is irrelevant (Imalat-hane, Bursa), Sweet Garden of Vanishing Desires (Arton, Istanbul), Reciprocity Muscles (Cala, Berlin), My Dear Friends (Depo, Istanbul) and Make it Hot, Cool it Down, Turn it Over (London).

She was assistant curator of the 10th BACA Award Exhibition at Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, the Pavilion of Turkey at the 58th Venice Biennale, and BAHAR, the Istanbul offsite project of Sharjah Biennial 13. 

Recently, she served as managing editor of YAZ Publication Series as part of Sharjah Biennial 16. Her writing has been published in AQNB, Flash Art, This is Tomorrow, Cogito, and Art Unlimited. She is the co-author of Otomy (2022) and winner of Volumes Book Award 2022. Currently, she is based between Istanbul and London.

Elham Puriya Mehr is an Iranian/Canadian artist, curator, scholar, and writer based in Vancouver BC. She holds a BA and MA from the University of Art in Tehran, a PhD in Art Research from Alzahra University, and completed a Research Fellowship in Advanced Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research explores the potentialities of social-space atmospheres to generate alternative forms of learning and knowledge-making, activated through the possibilities opened up by “events.”

Puriya Mehr has held academic appointments at Sooreh University, where she served as Chair of Graduate Studies in the Applied Arts Department (2005–2008); at the University of Art in Tehran (2005–2009); and at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver (2017–2019), among other institutions.

She was a Research Associate with the freethought collective (2021–2022) and has curated numerous exhibitions and public art projects, including both her own sculptural works and those of other artists. Her selected curatorial activities include co-curating Unfolding Desire at Trieste Contemporanea (Trieste, 2025); delivering a lecture at the National Museum of Iran (Tehran, 2025); serving as Artistic Director of the international symposium Contact Zone (Tehran, 2024); leading the curatorial team for Live Assembly: Repair and Care (LIVE Biennale, Vancouver, 2021); curating Club 29 at Ag Experiment (Tehran, 2018); curating I Am Here at Ag Galerie (Tehran, 2017); co-curating Beyond History at Framer Framed (Amsterdam, 2015); and curating for The Fourth Annual Sanandaj (Kurdistan Province, Iran, 2013).

Puriya Mehr is the co-director of Empty Space Studio, a nomadic, non-profit organization based in Tehran, London, and Vancouver.