Ghazaleh Avarzamani: Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return

Ghazaleh Avarzamani’s exhibition, 'Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return,' investigates how familiar objects and environments, such as playgrounds and games, mirror and reinforce social and political power structures. By recontextualizing items like nursery rhymes, manuals, and Monopoly, Avarzamani exposes the mechanisms of control, obedience, and hierarchy embedded within educational and entertainment systems. Her work challenges viewers to recognize how these structures shape daily life and collective fantasy. The installation incorporates sculptures, textiles, and archival objects, utilizing butter as both a material and a metaphor for labor, economic volatility, and imperial expansion. Inspired by the logic of Monopoly, the exhibition links the game to themes of territorial extraction and the gamification of ownership. Through this critical examination, the artist highlights paradoxes in social methodologies and encourages a space for critical awareness, disruption, and refusal regarding systems of institutional power.