Nazgol Ansarinia’s solo exhibition explores the dynamics between vision, surveillance, and public architecture. The interdisciplinary artist - working across drawing, sculpture, installation, architecture, and video - develops a complex “psychovisual” language centered on residential buildings reminiscent of Tehran’s brutalist blocks, reflecting on the relationship between private space and social control. The exhibition unfolds as a kind of human-scale model turned defensive labyrinth: large steel, glass, and stone structures recreate the negative frame of windows, assembling actual “watchtowers” that impose a gaze upon the viewer. Video screens show building facades transitioning from daylight to nighttime, fragmenting and recomposing the viewer’s visual experience. On the threshold of intimacy, as the camera zooms in on specific windows, the architectural infrastructure dissolves, reversing the surveillance mechanism and offering an inverted gaze: the observed public becomes the observer. Through this dual perspective, Ansarinia stages a “phantom construction site,” evoking fragility, resistance, and the drama of abolished structures. The project inscribes itself within post-minimalist critical thought, proposing a form of political materialism that challenges the dominant narrative of a “dematerialized” society. Her works summon hidden and resurfacing urban memories, tucked into the folds of everyday architecture. The exhibition offers a powerful visual reflection on architecture, social control, and perception. With an approach that is both rigorous and poetic, Ansarinia restores a critical voice to materials such as glass and concrete, reminding us that every window has two sides.
