Variations on a Garden

More information to be posted shortly.

This event is co-sponsored with the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, UBC.

Abbas Akhavan: 100 Years will be on display at the Belkin Art Gallery from 5 September - 7 December, 2025. 

Abbas Akhavan’s (b. 1977, Tehran, Iran; lives/works: Montreal and Berlin) practice ranges across site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video, sculpture, and performance. The direction of his research has been deeply influenced by the specificity of the sites in which he works, including the architectures that house them, the economies that surround them, and the individuals that frequent them. The concept of the garden—and by extension, the spaces and species just outside the home, such as the backyard, public parks, and other domesticated landscapes—have been foundational components in his work. In recent large-scale installations, Akhavan recreates cultural sites affected by international conflicts, attending to the multivalent ways in which ongoing geopolitics fight for control of historical narratives. Through his work, Akhavan engages with formal, material, and social legacies that shape the boundaries between public and private, domesticated and wild, hostile and hospitable.

Akhavan received an MFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2006), and a BFA from Concordia University, Montréal (2004). Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include La Biennale di Venezia, Canada Pavilion (2026); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2026); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2025); Bangkok Kunsthalle (2025); Copenhagen Contemporary and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (2023). He is the recipient of the Fellbach Triennial Award (2017); Sobey Art Award (2015); Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014); and the Berliner Kunstpreis (2012).