GHAZALEH AVARZAMANI

Desire Is Tender Is Love Is Love

2018

Desire Is Tender Is Love Is Love—a title borrowed from Subversive Economies by Daniella Valz Gen—takes the form of two large, translucent soap blocks whose colour, shape, and opacity shift subtly over time in response to the environmental conditions of the site. By employing soap in place of the durable materials traditionally associated with monumental sculpture, the work becomes a meditation on impermanence, time, and the fragility of memorialization.

Here, soap gestures toward the impossibility of a true “clean slate.” It slowly erodes, absorbing traces of its surroundings, yet never fulfills its intended function of cleansing. This gradual transformation renders the work perpetually unresolved—a sculpture that resists fixity and completion.

As it changes, Desire Is Tender Is Love Is Love reflects on the porous nature of being: how exposure shapes us, how we learn and unlearn, and how tenderness, endures through dissolution.