Abbas Akhavan's multimedia installations often reflect on public and private space, in particular the garden.
The Iranian-born artist Abbas Akhavan will represent Canada at the 61st Venice Biennale, the National Gallery of Canada announced Thursday.
The artist, who lives and works in Montreal and Berlin, creates multimedia installations that reflect on public and private space, in particular the garden. His task in Venice in 2026 will be to create an installation in the Canada Pavilion that speaks to the architecture and history of the site. It’s a spiralling modernist shed of brick, wood and glass built in 1956-7. Set in a manicured Venetian park established by Napoleon, it is sandwiched between the grander classical pavilions belonging to the old European powers.
His work, which has been shown widely in both Europe and Canada, deals precisely with that kind of layered setting as it considers how the spaces we inhabit are created, using sculpture, drawing, video and performance. For example, he includes references to the ancient ruins of buildings destroyed in wars or to the manufactured greenery of city parks and private gardens, exposing the uneasy balance between nature and human exploitation.
“Abbas’ work is shaped by the unique characteristics of the sites he works on, including the architectures, surrounding economies, and individuals who frequent them,” gallery director Jean-François Bélisle said in a statement. “We look forward to supporting him in bringing this vision to life at the Canada Pavilion.”
Akhavan was born in Tehran in 1977 and has worked in Canada for 30 years. He was the winner of 2015 Sobey Prize for an emerging artist, at which time he was living in Toronto. The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is planning a mid-career retrospective of his work in November, 2026.
The artist was selected by a committee of experts in contemporary Canadian art that was chaired by Bélisle and included: Art Gallery of Ontario global Africa curator Julie Crooks; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Indigenous practices curator Léuli Eshrāghi; Crystal Mowry, director of programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina; Daina Warren, director of Indigenous initiatives at Emily Carr University in Vancouver; and Pan Wendt, curator at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown.
The Venice Biennale, sometimes dubbed the Olympics of visual art, is a competitive international art exhibition with national pavilions and a large group show. In 2024, 86 countries participated. The current exhibition, where Canada is represented by Kapwani Kiwanga’s beaded installation entitled Trinket, continues to Nov. 24.