Abbas Akhavan (photo by Alex de Brabant)
The National Gallery of Canada has announced today that Abbas Akhavan will represent Canada at the 61st international Venice Biennale in 2026.
“Born in Tehran and based between Montreal and Berlin, Abbas Akhavan’s multidisciplinary practice reflects on the relationships between place and history, attending to the geopolitical forces which define spaces,” according to a new release from the National Gallery of Canada.
“Working across site-specific ephemeral installations, drawing, video, sculpture, and performance, Akhavan critically engages with formal, material, and social legacies that shape the boundaries between public and private spaces.”
His recent solo exhibitions include shows at Copenhagen Contemporary and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen in 2023, Vancouver's Contemporary Art Gallery in 2022, The Power Plant in Toronto in 2018. He was the recipient of the Sobey Art Award in 2015, and in November 2026, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis will present a show of Akhavan’s work.
The Biennale decision was made by a group that included Julie Crooks, curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, Art Gallery of Ontario; Léuli Eshrāghi, curator of Indigenous Practices, Montreal Museum of Fine Art; Crystal Mowry, Director of Programs, MacKenzie Art Gallery; Daina Warren, executive director, Indigenous Initiatives at Emily Carr University; Pan Wendt, curator, Confederation Centre of the Arts; and committee chairperson Jean-François Bélisle, Director & CEO, National Gallery of Canada.
“The committee was drawn to the interdisciplinary practice of Abbas Akhavan, a meticulous artist and thinker for whom the site of an exhibition becomes both a proposal and provocation involving the staging of relations between materials, memory, and place. Whether invoking the ruins of ancient statues destroyed during geopolitical conflicts or exploring the stated idealism of gardens and other domesticated spaces, Akhavan’s sculptural environments set the natural world in uneasy balance with the valorization, exploitations, or indeed indifferences of contexts, systems, and projections all too human in origin.”
The International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, commonly referred to in English as the Venice Biennale, takes place every two years and is the world's largest and most prestigious contemporary art exhibition. This year, more than 80 countries participated. “The Canada Pavilion is commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. It is presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation.”
Artists who have previously represented Canada at the Biennale include Jean Paul Riopelle, Michael Snow, Geneviève Cadieux, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Rebecca Belmore, David Altmejd, Shary Boyle, BGL, Geoffrey Farmer, Isuma, Stan Douglas and Kapwani Kiwanga.
The Biennale Arte 2024 visitors can still view Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket at the Canada Pavilion until Nov. 24.
Source: National Gallery of Canada
