Abbas Akhavan: cast for a folly

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Abbas Akhavan, "cast for a folly," 2022

Saturday, June 25 · 12:00 PM, Saturday Session: Marina Roy on Abbas Akhavan

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. This month, we welcome Marina Roy to speak on the work of Abbas Akhavan.

The work of Abbas Akhavan takes shape across a range of media and forms. From sculpture and installation to drawing, performance and video, Akhavan’s practice is anchored deeply in the specificities of the sites and spaces he engages. Often open-ended, ephemeral or mimetic in nature, Akhavan’s works frequently traffic in slippages and transferences — between public and private, presence and absence, structural and symbolic.

At the Contemporary Art Gallery, Akhavan presents cast for a folly (2019/2022), an installation that takes as its point of departure a photograph of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad: an image of the museum’s lobby taken following its unprecedented looting during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Through sculpture, custom-fabricated furniture and found objects, amongst other forms, Akhavan recreates this scene in the gallery from the single vantage point of his source image. Adjacent to this installation is a new work composed of flower fridges — untitled (2022) — a continuation of Akhavan’s ongoing engagement with plant life as both index to and instrument of broader social economies.

cast for a folly (2019/2022) was originally curated by Kim Nguyen and commissioned by CCA Wattis Institute.

Biography

Abbas Akhavan lives and works in Montréal. Recent solo exhibitions include Mount Stuart House, Isle of Bute (2022), Chisenhale Gallery, London (2021); CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2019); Fogo Island Gallery, Fogo Island, (2019); and VIE D'ANGE, Montréal (2018). Group exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022); Momenta Biennale at Phi Foundation, Montreal (2021); Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2018); SALT Galata, Istanbul (2017); Sharjah Biennial 13, United Arab Emirates (2017); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016). He is the recipient of the Fellbach Triennial Award (2017); Sobey Art Award (2015); Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014); and the Berliner Kunstpreis (2012).