Now, Still We Gather

Now, Still We Gather does not begin with a curatorial argument. It begins with constraint. Behrang Samadzadegan — painter, critic, curator — was asked to organise an exhibition under conditions shaped by material and logistical interruption, and chose to work with an existing archive rather than construct a new thematic selection. The result follows what he describes as a Benjaminian constellational logic: works placed in relation to each other not because they share a subject but because of what emerges in the proximity. Meaning as constellation rather than statement. The artists — among them Mehrdad Afsari, Neda Saeedi, Soraya Sharghi, Shohreh Mehran and Niloofar Rahnama — work across photography, painting and textile. What they share is not a medium or a generation but a context: the experience of making work inside and outside Iran, of carrying a cultural identity that is simultaneously present and under pressure. The exhibition was covered by Canvas Online as one of the notable presentations at Alserkal Avenue in May 2026.