THIRD SPACE
Project Information
Year
2025
Format
Group Exhibition
Venue
Sheydaei Art Gallery
City / Country
Tehran, Iran
Curator
Arezu Zargar
Artists
- Sima Bagherzadeh
- Hanieh Khodabandehloo
- Mitra Zarei
- Yasamin Saffarian
- Delaram Faghani
- Hamideh Mohebbi
- Hedyeh Nobahar
- Negar Honarpisheh
Position within My Curatorial Practice
Third Space marked an important development in my curatorial practice by extending the residency model into the exhibition itself. Rather than treating the exhibition as the final outcome, the project emphasized process, collaboration, and the relationships that emerge between artists, materials, space, and audiences. It reflects my ongoing interest in curating exhibitions as research environments where meaning develops through dialogue rather than predetermined narratives.
Group Exhibition
About the Project
Third Space was a group exhibition curated by Arezu Zargar at Sheydaei Art Gallery in Tehran. Bringing together eight contemporary artists whose practices emerged through an eight-month residency at BON ART PROJECT Studio, the exhibition explored how meaning is produced through relationships between artworks, material, space, and the presence of the viewer.
Rather than presenting artworks as isolated objects, Third Space proposed the exhibition itself as a relational environment where different artistic languages could coexist, interact, and generate new forms of dialogue.
Exhibition Statement
Third Space is the result of artists' experiences during a residency at BON ART PROJECT Studio. It is a place where collaborative work, hands-on engagement with the challenges of materials and space, and different artistic languages come together, creating room for meaning to emerge through difference.
The works in this exhibition are not simply objects; they are events in motion. Through trial and error, material experimentation, and working with what is available, the artists have created works in which traditional boundaries and categories give way to dialogue between media, forms, and perspectives.
Arezu Zargar
Curatorial Framework
The exhibition was inspired by the idea of the Third Space as a place where meaning is continuously negotiated rather than fixed. Instead of emphasizing individual artistic identities, the curatorial approach focused on the relationships that emerged between works, materials, architecture, and viewers.
The residency process became an essential part of the exhibition itself. Shared experimentation, conversation, and making formed the foundation of the project, allowing the exhibition to function not simply as a presentation of completed artworks, but as the continuation of an evolving collective process.
Timeline
12 April 2025 – 3 December 2025
Eight-month residency at BON ART PROJECT Studio, where participating artists developed their projects through material experimentation, collaborative practice, studio discussions, and continuous research.
December 2025
Curatorial development, exhibition design, installation, and final preparation at Sheydaei Art Gallery, Tehran.
26 December 2025
Opening of Third Space.
26 December 2025 – 9 January 2026
Public exhibition at Sheydaei Art Gallery, Tehran.
8 January 2026
Panel Discussion on Third Space
A public discussion held at Sheydaei Art Gallery, Tehran, with Mahmoud Maktabi, Farzad Faraji, and curator Arezu Zargar. The conversation examined the exhibition's curatorial framework, the participating artists' practices, and broader questions surrounding contemporary artistic practice and the notion of the Third Space.
