Rouzbeh Akhbari is an artist, filmmaker, and geographer working between exhibition and cinema contexts. His long-term research into ecologies of labour embedded within border zones considers infrastructures of control and methods of evasion.

In 2024, Mercer Union invited Rouzbeh to develop a new film installation for his first institutional solo exhibition in Canada. Titled Of Wool and Diesel (2026), the work follows the smuggling of sheep by speedboat within the Strait of Hormuz as part of an essential transcontinental supply chain, a network of informal traders, and a history of lawless seas with ties to 16th-century Portugal. The project culminates over four years of research and is developed alongside a growing body of work that includes the artist’s debut documentary feature, Crossings: Kaleh Ziyarat (2026)—a companion film and counterpoint to the exhibition.

Mercer Union’s collaboration with Rouzbeh emerges from our long-held commitment to commissioning new work and creating milestone opportunities for artists to bring their visions to fruition in Toronto. Through our commissioning platform Artist First, we invest in the lifecycle of a project from conception to realization, cultivating discovery, risk-taking, and artistic development through long-term support and dialogue. To learn more, visit mercerunion.org/support