Abbas Akhavan was born in Tehran, and currently lives and works in Toronto. His practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video and performance. For the past five years, the domestic sphere has been an ongoing area of research in Akhavan’s work. Earlier works explore the relationship between the house and the nation state and how the trauma of systemic violence enacted upon civilians can be inherited and re-enacted within the family lineage – the home as a forked space between hospitality and hostility. More recent work has shifted focus onto spaces just outside the home – the garden, the backyard, and other domesticated landscapes. Akhavan’s work has been exhibited in spaces including Vancouver Art Gallery, Mercer Union (Canada), ABC Art Berlin Contemporary, KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Germany), Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, (Denmark), Le Printemps de septembre a Toulouse, (France), Botkryka Konsthall, (Sweden), and Third Line (Dubai, UAE). Recent residencies include Fundatcion Marcelino Botin with Mona Hatoum, (Spain), Axeno7, Video In (Canada), and the Delfina foundation residency (Dubai). Currently Akhavan is preparing for a group show at Belvedere Museum (Austria), with upcoming solo exhibitions at The Delfina Foundation (UK), The Darling Foundry (Canada), and a project for Performa 11 (USA).
Attempts at representing the “mad” have ranged from historical models of physiognomy to abstraction and back again to the physical. But despite what the cause may be, from humors to black biles and other stones, race and sexuality have more often than not played a significant role in the creation of the mad, other, fool, artist, fallen, melancholic, idiot, dummy, dumb-ass, shit pisser, possessed, wild man, beast, and so on – Phantom head is a video performance about the collapse of the spaces between the head and the body, the enemy with the parent, the mad and the genius… and so on. This residency is time and space for the development of the video / performance titled, Phantom head, and is the inaugural Watermill / ArteEast Partnership.