Abbas Akhavan
About the Artist
Abbas Akhavan currently lives and works in Toronto. His practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video and performance. The domestic sphere has been an ongoing area of research in Akhavan’s work. Earlier works explore the relationship between the house and the nation state and how trauma of systemic violence enacted upon civilians can be inherited and reenacted within the family lineage — the home as a forked space between hospitality and hostility. More recent work has shifted focus onto spaces just outside the home: the garden, the backyard, and other domesticated landscapes.
Akhavan’s work has been exhibited at the Darling Foundry, Montreal; the Vancouver Art Gallery; the Power Plant, Toronto; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Germany; Performa 11, USA; Bucharest Biennial 5, Romania and the Belvedere Museum, Vienna. Akhavan was the recipient of the Berlin Kunstpreis 2012.
