Image: Abbas Akhavan. Photo: Alex de Brabant (2024)
Abbas Akhavan, the artist representing Canada at this year's Venice Biennale, will speak at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa on Thursday, October 8, 2026, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The free talk in the gallery's Auditorium is the twelfth annual Stonecroft Visiting Artist Lecture, hosted by the National Gallery in partnership with the University of Ottawa and the Stonecroft Foundation.
Akhavan will discuss his practice and "Entre chien et loup," the site-specific installation he made for Venice. He will then talk with Jonathan Shaughnessy, the gallery's Director of Curatorial Initiatives, before questions from the audience. The lecture is in English with simultaneous French interpretation, and seats in the Auditorium are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Born in Tehran in 1977, Akhavan has lived in Canada for three decades and now divides his time between Montreal and Berlin. His work moves between site-specific and often temporary installations, drawing, video, sculpture and performance, and it is shaped closely by the places where he works. Domestic settings and the spaces and species just beyond them, such as backyards, public parks and other cultivated landscapes, have been central to his practice. In recent large installations he has recreated cultural sites affected by international conflicts, examining how competing geopolitical interests struggle over control of historical narratives.
His solo exhibitions include shows at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2026, the Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver and Bangkok Kunsthalle in 2025, Copenhagen Contemporary and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in 2023, Chisenhale Gallery in London in 2021 and The Power Plant in Toronto in 2018. He has taken part in the Gwangju, Liverpool and Sharjah biennials, among others. Akhavan holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia, and his awards include the Sobey Art Award in 2015, the Abraaj Group Art Prize in 2014 and the Berliner Kunstpreis in 2012.
