Celebrating Canadian art on the world stage
Abbas Akhavan - La Biennale di Venezia 2026
September 11
Heather Edwards Theatre | 6:30 PM
The National Gallery of Canada and the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, in collaboration with Contemporary Calgary, are delighted to invite you to a special program in honour of Abbas Akhavan’s selection as Canada’s representative at the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2026.
Please join us for a conversation with artist Abbas Akhavan, Kim Nguyen, curator of Akhavan’s presentation in Venice, and Kanika Anand, Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary.
As part of the evening, guests are invited to explore Presence, Contemporary Calgary’s group exhibition featuring works by Akhavan.
We look forward to gathering with our valued patrons and friends to celebrate Abbas Akhavan’s remarkable achievements and the international showcasing of Canadian contemporary art at the Venice Biennale.
Free with registration.
Photo: Alex de Brabant (2024)
La Biennale di Venezia 2026 – Artist Biography
Abbas Akhavan
Abbas Akhavan, born in 1977 in Tehran, has been based in Canada for the last thirty years. He currently works and lives in Montréal and Berlin. Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2026); Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2025); Bangkok Kunsthalle, Bangkok (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); Fogo Island Arts (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2018); Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2017); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017); Mercer Union; Toronto (2015); & the Delfina Foundation, London (2012). Recent group exhibitions include the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2024); 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022); Protocinema, Istanbul (2021), Walk & Talk, São Miguel (2020); Toronto Biennale (2019); Liverpool Biennial (2018); SALT, Istanbul (2017); Prospect New Orleans (2017); Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017); & 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, Montréal (2004). Recent residencies include Fogo Island Arts, Fogo Island, Canada (2019, 2016, 2013); Atelier Calder, Saché, France (2017); and Flora ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia (2015). He is the recipient of the Fellbach Triennial Award (2017); Sobey Art Award (2015); Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014); and the Berliner Kunstpreis (2012).
Photo: Azikiwe Mohammed
La Biennale di Venezia 2026 – Curator Biography
Kim Nguyen
Originally from Winnipeg, curator and writer Kim Nguyen is Director of Programs at the Ruth Foundation for the Arts in Milwaukee. Prior to Ruth Arts, she served as Curator and Head of Programs at the Wattis Institute and adjunct professor of fine arts at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and was Director/Curator of Artspeak in Vancouver. Nguyen has worked with a wide range of artists, including curatorial projects with Maia Cruz Palileo, Ken Lum, Lorraine O’Grady, Hồng-Ân Trương, and Akosua Adoma Owusu, among many others. In 2019, she curated Abbas Akhavan’s first solo presentation in the United States at the Wattis Institute,
featuring the reconstructed lobby of the National Museum of Iraq. The installation was based on a photograph of the museum’s looting during the 2003 invasion of Baghdad. Most recently, she co-curated Ruth Arts’ inaugural exhibition, Benny Andrews: Trouble—the first major presentation of the late artist’s artwork and archives.
“Deeply observational and intuitive, Abbas Akhavan's practice is one of resonances—of the knowledges and histories that reverberate today, of the precarity of life, of the tension between loyalty and deception. The contemplative nature of his work encourages us to think, to feel, to acknowledge what we do not know, but to consider caring for it anyway. It has been a gift to think alongside and support Akhavan's practice over the past two decades, and it is an honour to be collaborating with him on his presentation at the 2026 Venice Biennale.” — Kim Nguyen, Curator
About the Curator
Kanika Anand
Kanika Anand is the Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary, Canada and co-curator of the Indian Ceramics Triennale, India. Her curatorial approach focuses on placemaking and social practices that interrogate structures of power and modes of engagement. Through a lens of interstitial discourse, constructs of time, social space, and traces of mobility remain a keen area of interest and research.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Delhi University and a Master’s degree in Art History from the National Museum Institute, India. She has been curatorial fellow at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France (2012-13) and fellow at the Global Cultural Leadership Programme, organised by the Cultural Diplomacy Platform and the European Cultural Foundation (2018). She has worked extensively with galleries and institutions across North America, France and India and has worked on major exhibitions of work by Yoko Ono, Chitra Ganesh, Diane Arbus, Marcel Dzama, Paola Pivi. She has written for art journals like Ocula, Art India, and Art Basel and has contributed to several books on contemporary art.
