Join Abbas Akhavan, the Cecil H. and Ida Green Visiting Professor, for his talk Variations on a Garden at Green College Coach House where he will discuss some of his most significant works to date, particularly those focused on animals, ruins and gardens. Akhavan’s 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 will represent Canada at the 2026 61st Venice Biennale and his work will be shown at the Belkin in the upcoming exhibition Abbas Akhavan: One Hundred Years (5 September-7 December 2025).

The talk will be live-streamed and followed by a public reception at Green College.

Image (above): Abbas Akhavan, Loop, 2023. Installation view, soft and weak like water, 14th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall, Gwangju, South Korea, 2023. Photo: glimworkers. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver