The Unfolding Desire Assembly is a one-day curatorial program curated by former Griffin curator-in-residence Elham Puriya Mehr and co-organized with the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Art of Wellbeing Lab, Griffin Art Projects, and Empty Space Art Studio Society. Bringing together Vancouver-based and international artists, curators, and researchers through talks, panel discussions, a studio visit, and a performance, the Assembly creates a shared space for study, conversation, and encounter.
The Assembly extends Unfolding Desire, a project co-curated by Francesca Lazzarini and Elham Puriya Mehr and organized in Trieste, Italy, in 2025. Conceiving desire as a force capable of imagining and enacting alternative futures, Unfolding Desire explored the significance of Franco Basaglia’s psychiatric reforms and their enduring commitment to collective practices of care. Extending this inquiry to Vancouver, a city increasingly shaped by economic precarity, rising living costs, and diminishing artistic infrastructures, the Assembly foregrounds the affective and relational dimensions of mental health and artistic labour.
Reflecting on the challenges facing artists and art workers in Vancouver, the Assembly asks: What does it mean to understand the relationship between mental health and artistic creation as a shared field in which subjectivity, affect, and expression are continuously co-constituted? How might artistic desire be reclaimed from neoliberal regimes that reduce creativity to perpetual production, competition, and self-exposure? And what forms of collective care, social infrastructure, and institutional support are required to sustain artistic life under such conditions?
RSPV for the assembly can be found at vanartgallery.bc.ca
Out of Order, A Workshop by Artist Ofri Cnaani for Unfolding Desire Project, Center of Documentation, Oltre il Giardino, 2026. Photo by Michela Coslovich.
The Unfolding Desire Assembly is presented as part of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Art of Wellbeing initiative, in collaboration with Griffin Art Projects and Empty Space Art Studio Society. The Assembly is generously supported by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (Italy) and the Canada Council for the Arts, whose ongoing commitment to artistic research and creation in Canada we gratefully acknowledge. We also acknowledge the organizations that supported the Unfolding Desire project in Trieste (2025), with special thanks to the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region for its generous contribution. The project was realized by AiR Trieste and Cultural Inventory, in partnership with La Collina Social Cooperative, Trieste Contemporanea, and Griffin Art Projects.
