Interrogating Control: The Imaginative Works of Ghazaleh Avarzamani

Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Strange Temporalities, 2018. Segmented Slide on Metal Armature, varied dimensions. Photo: Stephen White. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

There are imaginative and probing ways to interrogate these accumulations of power and their structures of control. For Tehran-born artist Ghazaleh Avarzamani — whose career spans two decades — the world is like a game board, where ideas and ideals congregate in a constant struggle for power. A complex code of game rules, learned behaviours, social norms and reward systems informs power dynamics that govern the arenas of everyday life. Avarzamani examines the instability of power and our understanding of it through works that address games, language and psychology.

Playgrounds are unexpected incubators of ideas of security, where children first learn to navigate rules through the imaginative realm of games. Avarzamani’s Strange Temporalities (2018) explores this paradoxical terrain, where freedom and restraint coexist, through a segmented blue plastic slide supported by metal scaffolding. Exhibited in the park grounds of Frieze Sculpture 2019, a sculpture festival held in London each autumn, the setting reinforced the idea of playgrounds as sites of knowledge production that shape social and cultural understandings of the world. Playground slides are designed to physically constrain the body, employing gravity to dictate movement and impose an obvious set of predetermined rules on play. Strange Temporalities sustains an alternative perspective that questions the supposed safety net of ideological structures. The fragmented slide invites us to unlearn ingrained norms and reimagine our surroundings beyond rigid frameworks of success and failure. This shift in perspective, in turn, represents a breaking free from the constraints of societal expectations.

Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Romance of Many Dimensions, 2019. Bamboo Basket and wood, varied dimensions. Photo: Alison Postma. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Ghazaleh Avarzamani, The Noble Game of Elephant and Castle, 2023. Loofah and embroidery, 178 x 152 cm. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Revealing the invisible mechanisms of dominance is a recurring strategy in Avarzamani’s explorations of gameplay. In The Noble Game of Elephant and Castle or Travelling in Asia (2023), an embroidery on a synthetic loofah washcloth from Iran, Avarzamani traces the intersection of colonial mastery and domestic amusement in early 19th-century England. Colonial-era travel games, like Elephant and Castle, reinforced British imperialism by framing colonized lands as exotic, blending geography lessons with Orientalist narratives. Reinterpreting the game, Avarzamani embroiders its 80-grid game sheet onto a royal blue loofah using white thread. Loofahs are abrasive washcloths customarily used in  Southwest Asia and North Africa, for cleansing and exfoliation. Through this medium, Avarzamani evokes the impermanence of power structures — fragile systems that, like dead skin, can be exfoliated away to make way for renewal.

Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Scratch Me, And I’ll Scratch You, 2023. Butter and wood, 300 x 250 x 250 cm. Photo: Jean-Michael Seminaro. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

This article is an excerpt and is available in full in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Studio Magazine.