Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden

On November 12, the Walker Art Center will open Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden, the artist’s first mid-career survey and his first major museum exhibition in the United States. Abbas Akhavan (Canada, b. Iran, 1977), who is currently representing Canada at the Venice Biennale, is known for his evocative, site-responsive installations that deeply engage with the histories, architectures, economies, and people of the places he researches. The forthcoming survey features important works made over the past 15 years—many to be presented in the US for the first time—providing the first comprehensive view into the arc of his career and the recurring conceptual concerns woven across his distinct projects. Variations on a Garden includes both intimately scaled sculptures and ambitious, large-scale installations such as curtain call, variations on a folly (2021), in which he re-creates the colonnade that once led to the ancient Palmyra Arch in Syria. Together, Akhavan’s works invite consideration of how history, culture, and the natural world have been shaped and reshaped through human action and the dynamics of power across time. The exhibition will be on view November 12, 2026, through April 18, 2027. 

Variations on a Garden explores Akhavan’s singular practice across more than a dozen works presented in four galleries. To honor the importance of architecture and spatial relationships in his practice, monumental installations are given their own rooms or large, dedicated environments, immersing visitors in the experience of the works. The exhibition also draws special attention to the artist’s use of organic and perishable materials, such as soil, straw, water, and plants, from the frost-covered coils of spring (2021) to the fresh cedar branches of A Study for a Garden (2014). For Akhavan, materials serve as conduits that carry ideas and produce meaning through their selection, manipulation, and contextual framingt. Throughout the exhibition, Akhavan encourages visitors to explore more deeply the contexts, meaning, and beauty of art.  

“With a great economy of means, Abbas Akhavan creates deeply moving and elegiac works,” says exhibition curator Pavel Pyś. “He poignantly draws attention to the human capacity for barbaric destruction and violence, our uncontrollable ravaging of the planet, and the erasure of shared commons. His art stands as an act of heartfelt humility, of bearing witness, of urging us to remember.”  

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. The exhibition is accompanied by a Walker designed catalog, the most comprehensive monograph published on Akhavan's work to date. 

Curatorial team: Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy; with Brandon Eng, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts  

Acknowledgments
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.