Abbas Akhavan’s (b. Tehran, Iran; lives/works: Montreal & Berlin) practice ranges across site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video, sculpture, and performance. The direction of his research has been 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, Vancouver (2006), and a BFA from Concordia University, Montréal (2004). Upcoming solo exhibitions include La Biennale di Venezia, Canada Pavilion (2026); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2026); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2025). He is the recipient of the Fellbach Triennial Award (2017); Sobey Art Award (2015); Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014); and the Berliner Kunstpreis (2012).

Ansgar Ole Olsen (b. 1952, Lyngen, Norway) works with sculptures in metal. He has a background as a sheet metal worker from the shipyard in Tromsø and art education from the Norwegian School of Craft and the Oslo National College of Art and Design (1982-1986).

Olsen combines the reuse of materials from old machines, vehicles, and agricultural tools with a modernist style. The works in stainless, lacquered or eroded, rusted steel thematize objects, motifs and materials from industrial, labor history and coastal culture, set in a stylized, abstracted and often playful form.

Olsen has held solo exhibitions at several of Noway's art centers and participated in numerous group exhibitions regionally and nationally. He has presented works at Collect at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and several other international exhibitions. Much of Olsen’s artistic work has involved larger decorative assignments in both public and private commissions, such as at Sommerlyst Secondary School in Tromsø, the Sami Science Building in Kautokeino, and Bodø Airport.

Olsen’s works are part of the collections at the National Museum, Nordenfjeldske Museum of Arts and Design, Nordnorsk Art Museum, the Norwegian Arts Council, as well as Innlandet County Municipality. He lives and works in Østre Toten.

Jon Benjamin Tallerås' (b.1984, Oslo, Norway) improvised actions, informal sculpture and low-profile infiltrations belong to a tradition of urban wandering that reaches back at least as far as André Breton's photographic expeditions in 1920s Paris. Tallerås investigates urban space, exploring hidden and often non-used areas of the city. Using found materials to create sculptures and making transient performances that claim the accidental gaps and spaces formed on the margins of functional architecture.

Tallerås has exhibited extensively throughout Norway and abroad, and his works have been shown in institutions such as: The Munch Museum (Oslo), Museum of contemporary art (Oslo), Bergen Kunsthall (Bergen), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), Kunsthall Oslo, LIAF Biennial (Svolvær), Stavanger Kunsthall, Kristiansand Kunsthall, Treignac Projet (France), CAC Vilnius (Lithuania), Kunsthall C, Stockholm (Sweden) LCCA (Latvia) and Pori Art museum (Finland).

With a multidisciplinary practice, performative scenarios are at the core of her work, either in the process or the final piece. Staging materials in real environments is central, and the playful, yet critical look on the way we relate to our surroundings is in focus. Stranger's work alternates between stage space and outdoor space, where the movement of the artwork can bee seen as a performance in itself. In search for dramatic potential in the material's relation to its surroundings, surreal scenarios emerge.

Stranger often uses music and sound as the foundation of her pieces. She believes in the emotional and collective potential that music has, and often intergrates this time-based element in her work, either as a performance to stage the installation, or in the piece itself.

In recent years, water has become a recurring stage for her sculptures, inspired by the beaver’s remarkable entrepreneurial skills in shaping its environment with water at the center.

With a broad background in music and theatre, her installations often blend different expressions. Marianne's works include sculpture, installation, performance, theatre, electric guitars and sound art scapes. Stranger has shown works at Ultimafestivalen, Du Beast (Berlin), Hamar Performance Festival, Oslofjord Triennale, Østfold Kunstsenter, Manipulate Festival (Edinburgh), among others. She holds a BA in Theater and Performance Design from LIPA in the UK.

Born in Mundubbera, Queensland in 1959, Judy Watson is a Waanyi descendant of north-west Queensland. Her ancestry and personal experiences have greatly influenced her artistic practice, which spans a variety of media including painting, printmaking, video, sculpture and installation.

She often addresses the complex history of colonialism and its impact on Indigenous communities. She explores themes of migration, survival and recovery, seeking to bring awareness and understanding to these issues. Her work is a powerful means of storytelling and a form of cultural preservation.

Exhibiting extensively since the 1980s, Watson co-represented Australia at the 1997 Venice Biennale and won the Works on Paper Award at the 23rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award in 2006. She was also the recipient of the National Gallery of Victoria’s 2006 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award. In 2011, Watson’s exhibition waterline was shown at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC, and in 2012, she exhibited in the Sydney Biennale. In 2018, the Art Gallery of New South Wales staged a major exhibition of her work titled the edge of memory. Watson has also received commissions for several public art projects across Australia, including fire and water at Reconciliation Place in Canberra in 2007, ngarunga nangama: calm water dream at 200 George St in Sydney and tow row for the Gallery of Modern Art’s 10th Anniversary in Brisbane in 2016, and bara at Dubbagullee (Bennelong Point) in the Sydney Royal Botanic Garden in 2022.

mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri, a significant survey of Judy Watson’s practice, opened in 2024 at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. Her work is also included in several significant Australian and international collections, including all of Australia’s state institutions, the National Gallery of Australia, the Tokyo National University of Technology, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the British Museum, and MCA/TATE. Watson is an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, and in 2018, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Art History by the University of Queensland.