Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden
Event Details
Abbas Akhavan (Canada, b. Iran, 1977) stages quiet encounters with the passage of time. By manipulating organic and inorganic matter, he raises questions surrounding ecological change, cultural preservation, and the division between public and private space.
Akhavan’s first major US museum survey, Variations on a Garden speaks to the concept of the garden as a negotiation between wild and domesticated life. In his work Study for a Monument (2013–ongoing), bronze casts of once-plentiful plants from the Tigris-Euphrates river basin lie on white sheets like casualties of war. Nearby, the installation cast for a folly (2019/2023) considers the rift between perception and reality, drawing on a photograph of the looted 2003 Iraq Museum lobby and rendering it instead as a theatrical set.
In its totality, Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden bears witness to the life-forms and landscapes upon which history is interminably etched. Like the garden, it prompts us to reconsider what we value and what we discard, what we cultivate and what we neglect.
Curators: Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy; with Brandon Eng, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts
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Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden is organized by the Walker Art Center with lead support from Teiger Foundation.
Major support is provided by Lewis Baskerville and the Martin and Brown Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Elisa Nuyten, and Tara and Christopher Poseley.
The exhibition catalogue is made possible by Lewis Baskerville and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of Walker Art Center publications.
