After all else

On the final day of Niloufar Emamifar’s exhibition Offcut we invite you to a conversation between the artist and Golnar Abbasi.

Thirteen years ago, Niloufar Emamifar and Golnar Abbasi met in Tehran, where a shared interest in spatial politics brought their practices into dialogue at the intersection of art and architecture. Since then, their conversations have continued as their lives diverged geographically. Here at Kunsthalle Zurich, they reunite to reflect on their respective practices and discuss extractive and subversive spatial practice, site-specificity, and photos of abandoned mattresses on sidewalks – in a conversation shaped as much by absence and distance as by proximity.

This conversation will take place in English; it will be photographed.
Entrance to Kaarel Kurismaa and Niloufar Emamifar's exhibitions is free on the 25 May 2026.

Golnar Abbasi is an architect-artist, researcher, curator and publisher. Her work focuses on politics of domesticity, anti-colonial space, practices of resistance and historical narrative. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment TU Delft, alumni of Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht and The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design in Delft. She is a co-founder of Rotterdam-based collective for architecture and art WORKNOT! focused on critical spatial practice and theory. She is an educator at MIARD, Piet Zwart Institute at Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam, while she explores experimental pedagogical practice in the framework of WORKNOT! Her work has been shown in Venice Biennale of Architecture, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Nieuwe Instituut, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, e-flux Architecture and Architecture Banal, among others.

Niloufar Emamifar is an artist based in New York. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2023); Kunstverein Kevin, Vienna (2023); MoMA PS1, New York (2022); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2022); SculptureCenter, New York (2021); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2021); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2020); Human Resources, Los Angeles (2019); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2017); and the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2016). Her most recent solo exhibition was Disjecta at Progetto, Lecce, Italy (2025). She has participated in programmes including the Whitney Independent Study Program; the Capp Street Fellowship at the Wattis Institute, San Francisco; the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Amant Foundation, New York; and the London College of Communication. Emamifar holds a BFA in Architecture from Soore School of Architecture, Tehran, Iran, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine.