Toronto-based, Iranian artist wins the coveted Canadian art prize.

The Sobey Art Award is held annually at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, and shortlists 5 artists from across Canada. The 14th edition awards Iranian artist Abbas Akhavan, whose work explores the domestic and domesticated space.

On 28 October 2015, the Sobey Art Award announced the winner of its CAD50,000 as Tehran-born, Toronto-based artist Abbas Akhavan. Held at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, the annual Sobey Art Award shortlists five artists from the five main Canadian provinces and territories, whose work is included in the Sobey Art Award exhibition. The 2015 shortlist was announced in June, while the group show opened on 26 September and will run until 3 January 2016.

The Award exhibition includes the work of Raymond Boisjoly (West Coast), Sarah Anne Johnson (Prairies and The North), Abbas Akhavan (Ontario), Jon Rafman (Québec) and Lisa Lipton aka FRANKIE (Atlantic). The curatorial panel for 2015 comprises eminent museum professionals from important institutions across Canada:

West Coast: Michelle Jacques, Chief Curator, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

Prairies: Meeka Walsh, independent curator and Editor, Border Crossings magazine

Ontario: Crystal Mowry, Curator, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

Québec: Mark Lanctôt, Curator, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal

Atlantic: David Diviney, Curator of Exhibitions, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

Guest: Josée Drouin Brisebois, Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada

Quoted in the press release, the Award’s curatorial panel said they

wanted to underline the generosity and empathy at play in Abbas’s work. Through a fugitive practice that resists fixed meaning, Akhavan reasserts that power and engagement are always relevant subjects for examination.

Who is Abbas Akhavan?



Born in Tehran, Iran, Abbas Akhavan (b. 1977) moved to Canada in 1992, where he received a BFA in Art History and Visual Arts (2004) from Concordia University, Montreal, and an MFA (2006) from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He currently lives and works between Toronto and Istanbul, and he is represented by The Third Line in Dubai and Galeri Mana in Istanbul. His work has been exhibited in important institutions and events such as the Delfina Foundation, London (2012), Bucharest Biennale (2012), The Power Plant, Toronto (2012), Performa 11, New York (2011) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011). Akhavan is also the recipient of Kunstpreis Berlin (2012) and the Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014).

Akhavan’s work ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video and performance. Central to his work is an inquiry into space, its significance and our perception of it, with a special focus on its inherent dichotomy of hospitality and hostility. More recently, Akhavan has shifted from the domestic, familiar space to the domesticated areas just outside the home, such as the garden and the backyard, among others, and the human-animal interactions within such spaces. Art Review writes that Akhavan

discreetly memorialises the impact of geopolitics and urbanisation on the natural world.

Akhavan was awarded the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2014 for his installation Study of a Monument (2013), an “act of commemoration” as well as an attempt to archive plants from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers region, in a nod to the legendary hanging gardens of Babylon. The artist made bronze models of the plants and laid them on white cotton sheets on the floor, to symbolise the funerary traditions that monuments and memorials commemorate.

At the Sobey Art Award exhibition, Akhavan presented his recent work Fatigues, an installation originally produced for La Biennale de Montréal in 2014, comprising a variety of taxidermied animals – such as birds, a fox, a deer and other mammals. The animals are ‘frozen’ in death, as opposed to being instilled with the illusion of life – the traditional approach to the practice of taxidermy. Placed around the museum’s space, the animals lie still, lifeless, after their accidental, fatal encounters – collisions with cars and buildings – with the human environment.

Sarah Fillmore, Curator of the Sobey Art Award and Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, told NGC Magazine (the National Gallery of Canada’s publication) about Akhavan’s work:

With this installation, Akhavan offers a commentary on the natural and built environments and the creatures that inhabit them. Each animal has met its demise through its contact with humans. It’s a very emotionally charged, powerful work that offers viewers a visceral response as they walk through.

Aside from the installation of the taxidermied animals, Fatigues consists of a series of temporary tattoos available through the Museum’s education and workshop programmes for kids. The tattoos are designed to disable facial recognition surveillance software.

The Sobey Art Award

The Sobey Art Award was founded in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation to promote interest, discussion and debate on Canadian contemporary art, and to honour young artists under 40 years of age whose contributions to the development of the art scene in the country are deemed exceptional. Past awardees include Nadya Myre (2014), Daniel Young & Christian Giroux (2011), David Altmejd (2009), Korean-born Tim Lee (2008) and Canadian Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook (2006).

C. A. Xuan Mai Ardia

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Related Topics: Iranian artists, Canadian artists, art awards, art prizes, events in Canada, news

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