Abbas Akhavan

The ways humans control animals is at the centre of a new Vancouver show.

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The first work to greet visitors to Abbas Akhavan’s exhibition at the Catriona Jeffries gallery in Vancouver is barely noticeable. Only a vigilant eye would notice that the security cage over the street-facing office window has been replaced with woven strips of flattened copper pipe, spray painted black on the outer side. 

The next encounter is with Trough, installed in the courtyard. It consists of large mirrored panels, their reflections augmenting the space even as the structure disappears into it. 

Akhavan, an Iranian-born artist who won the Sobey Art Award in 2015, continues to make references to animals inside the gallery, where his exhibition is on view until Jan. 18. For instance, a doorway between two gallery spaces has been transformed into an arched window that allows one to view two sculptures of white swans. The work refers to a viral video that shows a man untangling a pair of entwined swans alongside a Latvian river in 2009. 

Unless you have a keen sense of smell, you won’t realize the corners of the off-limits room have been marked with coyote urine. The pee demarcates a territory, connoting agency over a small domain, invisibly overthrowing the hierarchy of nobility that humans project onto the animal kingdom – regal swans versus vermin coyote. 

The coyote reference, plus the felt blanket that is Appendix G, invoke German artist Joseph Beuys, who pushed the limits of what art could be in visceral ways. Beuys, in a 1974 performance in New York City, wrapped himself in a felt blanket and spent three days in a gallery with a wild coyote. 

Central to Appendix G is a piece of narrative text that has been laser-cut into the thin felt. It relates to a 13th-century French record of a trial in which a pig was accused of biting a child and eventually executed, as if it were human. By anthropomorphizing the swine, its agency is weakened. A number of such animal trials are recorded in medieval history.

German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s writing about the reproduction of objects and images maintains that objects have auras – airs of mystique, power and authenticity – which fade from the object the more it is reproduced. The swans are laser-cut Styrofoam renditions of the real animals, whose aura has faded through the popularity of the YouTube video.  

Untitled (animal selfie) refers to another viral image, this one a grinning macaque’s 2011 selfie, seen by so many people online it has become almost fabled. In Akhavan’s work, the image of the monkey is supposedly adhered to a mirror, but we see only the back of the mirror, which is framed. The monkey was at the centre of a 2015 legal case initiated by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which questioned who has copyright over the image. In 2018, an American appeals court confirmed a lower court decision that animals cannot hold copyright.

Weight-lifting equipment dominates the gallery’s central floor space. This untitled ‘ready-made’ does have an aura – it is poised under a mist emitted from a dangling nozzle, giving it a sense of mystique. A gym compact enough for a private space speaks to both privilege and empowering oneself through physical strength. 

In this show, Akhavan provides narratives about justice and compassion, placing humans at the centre while observing how we use our agency in uneven ways to dole out justice.   ■

Abbas Akhavan: They asked the fox, “Who is your witness?” He said, “My tail.” At the Catriona Jeffries Gallery from Nov. 23, 2019 to Jan. 18, 2020.

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Catriona Jeffries Gallery

950 East Cordova Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6A 1M6

604-736-1554

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