The Unfolding Desire Assembly is a one-day symposium curated by former Griffin curator-in-residence Elham Puria Mehr and upcoming curator-in-residence Francesca Lazzarini and presented in collaboration with Vancouver Art Gallery Art of Wellbeing Lab. Bringing together Vancouver-based and international artists, curators, and researchers through talks, panel discussions, a video screening, an open studio, and a performance, the Assembly reflects on challenges facing artists and art workers in Vancouver and proposes a shared inquiry into alternative ecologies of care capable of sustaining artistic life and reactivating desire as a creative, collective, and future-making force. The Unfolding Desire Assembly will facilitate a shared space of study, conversation, and encounter to create conditions for critically rethinking distinctions between care and productivity, as well as between individual and collective forms of support, while enabling new imaginaries and ecologies of care to emerge.

Unfolding Desire, The Law of the Good Neighbour: workshop by Ofri Cnaani, Trieste, 2025. Photo: Francesca Lazzirini