Who Makes the Rules? Games, Light, and the Limits of Power
Who Makes the Rules? Games, Light, and the Limits of Power
Solo exhibitions by Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Haig Aivazian, and Adelita Husni Bey Open June 4 at Contemporary Calgary
Calgary, AB [May 28, 2026]: Contemporary Calgary will celebrate the opening of three new solo exhibitions on Thursday, June 4, exploring the systems that shape how we live, who holds power, and what it looks like to push back. Ghazaleh Avarzamani: Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return, Haig Aivazian: You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light, and Adelita Husni Bey: Agency each approach this terrain from a distinct vantage point, bringing together animation, film, and an immersive new sculpture and textile installation created specifically for the gallery space.
Among the highlights: a 1,000 lb butter sculpture being created at Contemporary Calgary for Avarzamani's exhibition, a monumental, perishable work that will only exist for the run of the show.
“These three exhibitions ask us to look more carefully at the world around us - at the games we play, the systems that govern public space, and the quiet mechanisms through which power is organized and contested,” explains David Leinster, CEO of Contemporary Calgary. “Credit to our curators Mona Filip and Muriel N. Kahwagi for bringing together three dynamic artists whose work is as visually stunning as it is thought-provoking.”
*More details of the three solo exhibitions are outlined in the following pages.
The exhibitions will open at Contemporary Calgary on June 4, from 5–9 PM, in conjunction with Free First Thursday. The evening's schedule includes gallery access from 5 PM, followed by remarks at 7 PM in the Atrium. Admission is free. No registration is required.
Ghazaleh Avarzamani: Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return, June 4–November 8, 2026
Ring Gallery | Curated by Mona Filip
Haig Aivazian: You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light, May 7–August 16, 2026
Morris & Ann Dancyger Observatory Gallery | Curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi
Adelita Husni Bey: Agency, June 4–November 8, 2026
Dome Theatre | Curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi
Media are invited to contact:
Jason Krell, Public Relations Contact for Contemporary Calgary
jk@jasonkrell.ca | 403.862.7380
Contemporary Calgary believes that art is essential.
The gallery exists to create a place of wonder and belonging where everyone is invited to imagine, learn and understand one another and the world we share through the power of contemporary art.
As a non-collecting public art gallery, Contemporary Calgary presents local, national and international contemporary art in all its forms. Exhibitions, public programs, educational activities and multi-disciplinary collaborations deepen the exploration of contemporary art and engage audiences in conversations around current ideas. Contemporary Calgary is located in the historic Centennial Planetarium, an iconic cultural space in the Downtown West End.
Ghazaleh Avarzamani: Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return
By Ghazaleh Avarzamani – artist will be in attendance on June 4
Theme: The Gamification of Power
Additional resources and full artist bio: Contemporary Calgary
Medium: Sculpture, textile, installation, found and archival objects
Curated by Mona Filip in the Ring Gallery, Atrium and building facade
"Avarzamani's work exposes how structures of power and control are deeply embedded in popular forms of entertainment and education. In her new installation, the familiar logic of a board game becomes a lens for examining cycles of labour, accumulation and exhaustion — and what it means to participate within a system that was never designed for everyone to win."
- Mona Filip, Chief Curator, Contemporary Calgary
What Visitors Will See
Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return unfolds as an immersive environment of sculptures, textiles, images, text, and found and archival objects inspired by Monopoly, where playfulness reveals the darker realities of power dynamics shaping society.
Central to the exhibition — and created entirely on-site at Contemporary Calgary — is a 1,000 lb butter sculpture. Referencing a life-size butter rendering of the Prince of Wales presented by Canada at the British Empire Exhibition in 1925, the work connects the logic of Monopoly to the spectacle of territorial expansion and extraction. Butter recurs throughout as both material and metaphor: tied equally to the labour of churning and the volatility of churning markets.
Things to Consider
What does it mean to play within a system whose rules were written before you arrived?
How do games, fables and rituals rehearse the social and political structures of everyday life?
When does participation become compliance?
What possibilities emerge when we recognize the game for what it is?
Haig Aivazian's and Adelita Husni Bey's exhibitions feel deeply resonant in this particular global and political moment. While Adelita's work asks us to consider the ways in which power manifests and is rehearsed through a game of make believe, Haig's exhibition investigates the public administration of light and darkness as a policing tool, positioning the night as a space where change can take place and power can be reclaimed. Both exhibitions invite us to reflect on the tension between agency and control, and the possibility of imagining a different world order.”
- Muriel N. Kahwagi, Associate Curator, Contemporary Calgary
Haig Aivazian: You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light
By Haig Aivazian
Theme: Light, Darkness, the Administration of Artificial Light in Public Space, Cartoons as “Good” Propaganda
Additional resources and full artist bio: Contemporary Calgary
Medium: Animated film (cartoon mini-series)
Curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi in the Morris & Ann Dancyger Observatory Gallery
What Visitors Will See
Visitors will encounter three episodes of an animated cartoon mini-series examining artificial light as a mechanism of governance and darkness as a space of resistance.
You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light (2022-ongoing) brings together three episodes of a cartoon mini-series by Haig Aivazian, building on his ongoing examination of the public administration of light and darkness as a policing tool.
Drawing on the history of public lighting, the work considers artificial light not just as a means for illuminating the streets at night, but as a mechanism of governance, where visibility underpins surveillance, authority, and the staging and enforcement of social order in public space.
Most civilizations have long understood the night as a realm of mystery. It belongs to creatures we have been trained to fear: gargoyles, vampires, and werewolves, lurking through the shadows. They inhabit the darkness, only to be banished by daylight — exposed, vilified, and cast as dangerous. But the night is also when we dream. Reality loosens its grip and other worlds begin to take shape. In dreams, regimes can falter, hierarchies dissolve, and new orders come into being — if only for a moment, before the day returns.
Composed of fragments of found cartoons and animations from a wide range of sources, all meticulously redrawn, stitched together, and reanimated in collaboration with a team of animators in Beirut, the work positions the night as fertile ground for upheaval and resistance — a space that allows for refuge and revolution. The exhibition looks at both the street and the nightclub as sites of disruption, drawing parallels between dancing and protest as forms of communal resistance, and traces the moment when these gestures begin to fail — when dance, gathering, and dreaming are no longer sufficient to hold the weight of opposition.
Things to Consider
Who has the power to control light? In what ways can darkness be weaponized?
How does the administration of light and darkness shape who belongs — and who is cast as a threat — in public space?
When do dance, gathering, and collective dreaming become insufficient as modes of resistance?
How can we reclaim power in the night?
Adelita Husni Bey: Agency
By Adelita Husni Bey
Theme: Power, Collective Rehearsal, and the Limits of Participation
Additional resources and full artist bio: Contemporary Calgary
Medium: Film
Curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi in the Dome Theatre
What Visitors Will See
2014, Rome, Italy. Thirty-five high school students were divided into five constituencies — politicians, activists, bankers, journalists, and workers — and asked to engage with pressing issues in contemporary Italian politics. Led by artist Adelita Husni Bey, the workshop drew on a 1970s UK critical civic studies method.
Presented more than a decade after its making, Agency (2014) documents this exercise, reflecting on the nature of power — how it manifests, operates, and may or may not be effectively used. Both disquieting and astute, the work resonates as urgently today as it did in 2014.
Things to Consider
What does it mean to exercise power, and what are its limits?
How do the roles we are assigned shape our understanding of agency and collective action?
In what ways does the work feel as urgent today as it did in 2014?
What can the structure of a workshop reveal about the structure of society?