Artist-in-Residence
Ghazaleh Avarzamani
Ghazaleh Avarzamani (lives and works between Toronto and London) works primarily in sculpture and installation. She is interested in how institutional structures and educational methodologies shape psycho-social constructions of knowledge and uses her practice as a way to question dominant power structures. Her large-scale works typically involve interactivity, and she frequently makes art in and about public space, utilizing signs and symbols familiar to pop culture and everyday life. Board games, origami, children’s playground equipment, and sports are all recurrent in her practice as objects that demonstrate the norms, rules, and invisible structures that shape human relations within society. For Avarzamani, the creation of spaces that are both inviting and potentially hazardous is a way to explore how games and play can be understood as tools that deconstruct, replicate, or transform public space. By examining the laws, rules and systems that govern human behaviour, her work suggests different possibilities for disrupting hegemonic systems of power.
She trained at the Azad Art University, Tehran, and holds an MFA from Central Saint Martins, London. She has recently presented at the Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh (2023) and in India (2023). Avarzamani has presented solo exhibitions at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; MOCA Toronto; Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto; TKE, Margate, UK; Asia House, London and Light Gallery, London; and has participated in international residencies at the Delfina Foundation and SOMA Mexico City. Her work is held in private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Rockefeller Center, Arsenal Contemporary, MOCA Toronto, TD Art Collection and Red Mansion.