Walker Art Center to Open Abbas Akhavan’s First Mid-Career Survey and First Major U.S. Show

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Variations on a Garden brings together important works from across the artist’s 20-year career, with many works shown in the U.S. for the first time

This Fall, the Walker Art Center will open Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden, the artist’s first mid-career survey and his first major exhibition in the United States. Akhavan, who is currently representing Canada at the Venice Biennale, has come to be recognized for his poignant, site-responsive installations, which engage with the histories, architectures, economies, and people of the places he studies. The forthcoming survey features important works from over the past two decades—many to be presented in the U.S. 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 sculptural works and ambitious, large-scale installations such as curtain call, variations on a folly (2021), which recreates the colonnade that once led to the ancient Palmyra Arch in Syria. Together, the works invite consideration of how history, culture, and aspects of nature have been shaped and reshaped through human driven events and the dynamics of power across time. The exhibition will be on view November 12, 2026, through April 18, 2027. 

Variations on a Garden is curated by Pavel Pyś, the Walker’s curator of visual arts and collections strategy, in close dialogue with the artist and with support from Brandon Eng, Assistant Curator, visual arts at the Walker. It continues the Walker’s longstanding commitments to provide a meaningful public platform for artists at different stages of their careers and to engage American audiences with artists from around the globe. To extend scholarship and awareness of the artist’s significant practice, the exhibition is accompanied by the artist’s first comprehensive monograph. Also titled Variations on a Garden, it includes a conversation with the artist as well as essays by Pyś, David Joselit, and Oxana Timofeeva. 

“With a great economy of means, Abbas Akhavan creates deeply moving and elegiac works,” says 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.”

Foundational to the artist’s practice is the concept of a garden. In its many forms, the garden stands as a reflection of the dichotomies universal to existence: nature versus culture; the public versus private, the wild versus domesticated, and the valued versus the discarded. Throughout his work, Akhavan reveals, questions, and meditates on these binaries and their multivalent implications, across history and into the present day. In Study for a Monument (2013-ongoing), rough, bronze casts of flora once native to the region around the Tigris and Euphrates river systems, thought to be the location of the exquisite Hanging Gardens of Babylon, are laid out on cotton sheets on the floor. The plant life decimated by wars and environmental degradation—now frozen as historical artifact—stands as a quiet witness to the imprint of human actions. 

In recent years, the artist has also engaged more actively with the effects of contemporary geopolitical conflicts—especially the Syrian and Iraq wars—on the preservation of cultural artifacts and the environment. In cast for a folly (2019/2023), which was acquired by the Walker in 2025, Akhavan uses a single documentary photograph to recreate the ransacked lobby of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The image captures both the futile efforts of dedicated museum workers to protect cultural heritage and the events’ aftermath, framed by some political leaders as a justifiable reality of war. At once an ode to what was lost and the significance of museum labor, the layered installation considers ideas of access, value, and how dominant narratives are established and perpetuated. 

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 the artist’s practice, monumental works 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, water, and plants, from large-scale works like spring (2021) to smaller pieces such as A Study for a Garden (2014). These materials serve as conduits that carry ideas and produce meaning through their selection, manipulation, and contextual framing, encouraging both physical and conceptual engagement and connection. Throughout the exhibition, Akhavan encourages visitors to explore more deeply the contexts, meaning, and beauty of art. 

Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden
November 12, 2026–April 18, 2027
Walker Art Center

About Abbas Akhavan

Abbas Akhavan’s (b. 1977, Tehran, Iran; lives/works: Montreal and Berlin) practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video, sculpture and performance. He currently represents Canada at La Biennale di Venezia (2026). Recent solo exhibitions include Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2025); Copenhagen Contemporary and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (2023); Mount Stuart House, Isle of Bute (2022); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2022); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2021); CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2018); Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2017); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017); and the Delfina Foundation, London (2012). Recent group exhibitions include Tate Modern, London (2025); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2024); 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023) and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022); Protocinema, Istanbul (2021); Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, UAE (2019); Liverpool Biennial (2018); SALT, Istanbul (2017); Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016).

Akhavan received an MFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2006), and a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal (2004). Recent residencies include Bangkok Kunstahalle, Bangkok, Thailand (2024); Fogo Island Arts, Fogo Island, Canada (2019, 2016, 2013); Capp Street Artist-in-Residence, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA (2019); Atelier Calder, Saché, France (2017); and The Delfina Foundation, London, UK (2012). He is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts (2025); Fellbach Triennial Award (2017); Sobey Art Award (2015); Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014); and Berliner Kunstpreis (2012).

Curatorial Team

Pavel Pyś, curator of visual arts and collections strategy, Walker Art Center, in close dialogue with the artist, and with Brandon Eng, Assistant Curator, visual arts, Walker Art Center.

Publication

Variations on a Garden is accompanied by an expansive, fully illustrated publication produced by the Walker Art Center. The 280-page volume is the artist’s first monograph. It includes a conversation between Abbas Akhavan and Brandon Eng as well as essays that extend understanding of the artist’s work by Pavel Pyś, David Joselit, and Oxana Timofeeva. A comprehensive suite of images plates give readers an opportunity to experience the works featured in the exhibition. The book was overseen by the Walker’s in-house design studio with lead design by Ben Schwartz.

About the Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a renowned multidisciplinary arts institution that presents, collects, and supports the creation of groundbreaking work across the visual and performing arts, moving image, and design. Guided by the belief that art has the power to bring joy and solace and the ability to unite people through dialogue and shared experiences, the Walker engages communities through a dynamic array of exhibitions, performances, events, and initiatives. Its multiacre campus includes 65,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space, the state-of-the-art McGuire Theater and Walker Cinema, and ample green space that connects with the adjoining Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Garden, a partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, is one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States and home to the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Recognized for its ambitious program and growing collection of more than 16,000 works, the Walker embraces emerging art forms and amplifies the work of artists from the Twin Cities and from across the country and the globe. Its broad spectrum of offerings makes it a lively and welcoming hub for artistic expression, creative innovation, and community connection.

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.