Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden

Akhavan’s sculpture and installation works attend to the ecology and politics of spatial relations, often incorporating ephemeral, organic materialsSpanning the 20-year practice of Canadian artist Abbas Akhavan (born 1977), Variations on a Garden highlights the recurring conceptual concerns manifest across his work—from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video, sculpture and performance. Specifically, the volume explores Akhavan’s engagement with human relations to the natural world, public and private space, and the conservation of heritage sites. In the artist’s corpus, portions of domesticated landscapes, adjacent to or coextensive with the home and archeological sites, are conspicuously situated within the liminal zone of the gallery. Amid the backdrop of white expanse, Akhavan intermingles indexes of artifice, such as green screens or tangled wires, with organic materials and perishable matter such as soil, water and plants. A suite of texts by curators and an interview conducted with the artist delve into the processes and inquiries that inform Akhavan’s practice.