Mahan Moalemi

Mahan Moalemi is a writer, curator, and doctoral candidate in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University. He previously studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Isfahan University of Art in Iran. He has received fellowships from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts and the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, and has held research and writing residencies at Kunstverein München, Para Site in Hong Kong, and the Alserkal Arts Foundation in Dubai, among others. He has also presented papers and participated in panels and symposia at venues such as the Goethe‑Institut New York, the LUMA Foundation in Arles, and Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm. He is the co‑editor of Ethnofuturisms (Merve Verlag, 2018), and has written for Art in America, Cabinet, Domus, e‑flux Criticism, frieze, and Spike Art Magazine, among other platforms, exhibition catalogues, artist monographs, and edited volumes, including chapters in two forthcoming books: Informatics of Domination (Duke University Press, 2025) and The Edinburgh Companion to Curatorial Futures (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Mahan is currently a graduate curatorial intern in the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums.

Contributions

A Queer Media Archaeology of the Future: Ming Wong’s Quest for a Cantonese Space Opera Film

A tapestry of interplays between mythology and technology is on display in Ming Wong’s Windows on the World (Part 2), a 24-channel soundtracked video installation from 2014 composed of flat-screen monitors arranged on three levels of long tabletops stacked like freestanding shelves. This work’s corpus of moving images and accompanying on-screen notes are gleaned from the sprawling archives of Cantonese opera film, East Asian science fiction, and TV news about the role of the People’s Republic of China in what has become of the Space Race.