OTTAWA.- Artist Abbas Akhavan (Montreal/Berlin, represented by Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver) and curator Dr. Andrea Fatona (OCADU, Toronto) receive the 2025 Mid-Career Awards for Excellence in Visual Arts ($30,000) and Curatorial Excellence ($20,000).
Abbas Akhavan, (b. 1977, Tehran, Iran), lives and works in Montreal and Berlin. His practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video, sculpture, and performance. His research has been deeply influenced by the specificity of the sites in which he works, including the architectures that house them, the economies that surround them, and the individuals that frequent them. The concept of the garden — and by extension, the spaces and species just outside the home, such as the backyard, public parks, and other domesticated landscapes — have been foundational components in his work. In recent large-scale installations, Akhavan recreates cultural sites affected by international conflicts, attending to the multivalent ways in which ongoing geopolitics fight for control of historical narratives. Through his work, Akhavan engages with formal, material, and social legacies that shape the boundaries between public and private, domesticated and wild, hostile and hospitable.
Akhavan received an MFA from the University of British Columbia (2006) and a BFA from Concordia University (2004). Solo exhibitions include La Biennale di Venezia (2026); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2026); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2025); and Copenhagen Contemporary and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (2023). Recent residencies include Fogo Island Arts (2019, 2016, 2013); Atelier Calder, Saché, France (2017); and the Delfina Foundation, London, UK (2012). He is the recipient of the Fellbach Triennial Award (2017); Sobey Art Award (2015); Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014); and the Berliner Kunstpreis (2012).
Selection committee: Michelle LaVallee (Director, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization Department & Curatorial Initiatives, National Gallery of Canada), Crystal Mowry (Director of Programs, MacKenzie Art Gallery), Kitty Scott (Strategic Director, Shorefast / Fogo Island Arts), Pascal Grandmaison (Artist, laureate of the 2015 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts), and Tak Pham (Curator, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta University of the Arts, and laureate of the 2023 Hnatyshyn Foundation - Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency)
Crystal Mowry: “Abbas is an artist for whom every material decision, every potential site/settlement, and every sound can serve as a node in a network of relations. Over the course of fifteen years, he has developed a practice attuned to the history and circumstances that prescribe hospitality. For Abbas, a proposal is also a provocation — a strategy honed through various commissioned installations and reflected in titling conventions for works he has revisited over time. Both generous and generative, each of his works has a forked potential. On the one branch there is the reality of materials configured and manipulated by humans to serve our needs and values, and on the other a non-human system where our values may be inconsequential. All his questions share something of what it's like to be introduced to our world anew, at this moment. Whether it be in the context of a garden or within the walls of a historical home, his work demonstrates how even the most minor disturbances — a window left open, a sprung leak, a displaced plant, an unpracticed fold — can be a vessel for both hope and dissent.”
Pascal Grandmaison: “Visiting Abbas’s aesthetic propositions makes us collectors of objects that we use in the next exhibition to unlock a new meaning. His is a neverending project; each gesture is an activation of fiction.”
Kitty Scott: “Abbas’s work registers on a poetic level, and simultaneously reflects the turbulence and violence of our present moment. This is a particular skill, which he employs while using an economy of means.”
Abbas Akhavan: “Thank you to the Jury and the Hnatyshyn Foundation for recognizing artists and their work. I am grateful for this unexpected gift. Visual language and working through materials have always helped me make sense of the world around me. They have been tools to negotiate and even, at times, overcome obstacles like language barriers and cultural differences. Ideally, my work is akin to a vessel of sorts – materials as conduits to carry ideas and aesthetics with ambitions of conjuring an atmosphere, something that halts, reflects and, at best, mends.”
The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence
Dr. Andrea Fatona is of Jamaican and Yoruba descent. She was born in Birmingham, England and moved to Toronto, Ontario from Jamaica in the late 1970s. She is an independent curator and an associate professor at OCAD University. Fatona is concerned with issues of equity within the sphere of the arts and the pedagogical possibilities of art works produced by ‘other’ Canadians in articulating broader perspectives of Canadian identities. Her broader interest is in the ways in which art, ‘culture’ and ‘education’ can be employed to illuminate complex issues that pertain to social justice, citizenship, belonging, and nationhood. She is the recipient of awards from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Fatona is a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Canadian Black Diasporic Cultural Production and the founder of the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora, OCAD U.
Selection committee: eunice bélidor (Independent curator, researcher, art critic, and writer, and laureate of the 2018 Hnatyshyn Foundation - TD Bank Group Award for Emerging Curator of Contemporary Canadian Art), Zachari Logan (Artist, Regina, Saskatchewan), Shelley Niro (Artist and laureate of a 2017 Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL Indigenous Art Award), Michelle Jacques (Director of Exhibitions & Collections/Chief Curator, Remai Modern, Saskatoon, and laureate of the 2022 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence), and Marigold Santos (Artist, Treaty 7 Territory; Mohkinstsis/Calgary).
Michelle Jacques: “Andrea Fatona has long been a force in advancing transformative curatorial thinking. Her interest extends beyond the exhibition itself to encompass the process and politics of making and presenting work. Her research projects are monumental, vital, and ongoing; she deftly weaves together academic inquiry and curatorial practice to foreground the work of Black artists and curators. Andrea has also led curatorial projects that have brought artists of different cultures together in a manner that was ahead of its time. At times when the kinds of exhibitions she champions were not widely embraced Andrea was able to make them happen — and she has continued to ensure that historically overlooked artists are brought into view. She always remains deeply committed to honouring the legacies of those who came before her.”
Marigold Santos: “I have a great respect for curators who help me understand things better. Fatona is an incredible curator and a beautiful speaker. In a curatorial talk, she said that ‘it is not necessary for us [curators] to be obtuse.’ Her research is deep and her work involves a broader community context. She is able to communicate complex ideas in a way that is accessible.”
Andrea Fatona: “This award is an affirmation and acknowledgment of my curatorial work that centres the practices and voices of BIPOC artists. Over the years, this work has only been possible because of the brilliant artists I've had the privilege to collaborate with, the support of generous institutions, and the strength of the communities I am part of. I am especially grateful to the late Derek Simons for offering space at Basic Inquiry Studio, Vancouver, BC to present my first exhibition, Queer Collaborations [1993]. A big thank you to the Hnatyshyn Foundation and to the jury — it's an honour to be recognized in this way!”
