Ghazaleh Avarzamani
Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return
June 4 – November 8, 2026
Examining familiar objects and settings — like playgrounds, board games or sport arenas — Ghazaleh Avarzamani’s complex mixed media installations reveal the insidious ways in which our social and political realities are constructed, exposing the underlying social, economic and psychological structures that govern human behavior, knowledge and power relations.
Poetic, funny and politically incisive – her works aim to uncover the paradoxical realities beneath the surface of society and its traditions, educational methodologies, individual aspirations, and cultural utopias. Through the careful scrutiny of popular forms of cultural expression such as fables, nursery rhymes, games, sports and manuals, she considers the persistent norms, rules and influences that shape interpersonal relations and impact our daily lives.
Often creating spaces that are simultaneously inviting and destabilizing, Avarzamani interrogates the architecture of our society to encourage critical investigation and action. Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return offers a seemingly playful environment where viewers quickly discover the stakes are higher and the underlying implications more somber. Yet, at a time when we might feel powerless against large-scale global shifts, her work invites us to recognize and potentially disrupt the systems of control surrounding us.
Curated by Mona Filip.
Upcoming Programs
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About the Artist
Ghazaleh Avarzamani (she/her)
Ghazaleh Avarzamani’s research aims at revealing and unsettling the often invisible social hierarchies that govern our lives. Through her practice, she explores the fallacies and inequities in our inherited knowledge and manuals. By creating visual narratives that simultaneously deconstruct and reconstruct time and space, she aims to reconfigure materials to highlight dysfunctionality and failure, utilizing collective human memory and knowledge that is often taken for granted. She reveals the extraordinary about the ordinary, and seeks ways to represent the otherwise taken-for-granted.
Avarzamani holds an MFA from Central Saint Martins, London. Her work has been exhibited at the Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh and India (2023), the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2021), MOCA Toronto (2021), Toronto Biennial (2022), Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto (2019), Ab-Anbar Gallery, Tehran (2016), Asia House, London (2014), and she has participated in international residencies, including at the Delfina Foundation (2022) and SOMA Mexico City (2018). Her work is held in private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Google, Rockefeller Centre, Arsenal Contemporary, MOCA Toronto, TD Art Collection and Red Mansion.
