NGV Triennial 2023 is a powerful and moving snapshot of the world today as captured through the work of 120 artists, designers, and collectives at the forefront of global contemporary practice. Bringing contemporary art, design and architecture into dialogue with one another and traversing all four levels of NGV International, the NGV Triennial features more than 100 extraordinary projects that invite us to reflect on the world as it is, while also asking how we would like it to be.

Nazgol Ansarinia’s practice investigates Tehran’s urban space as a mirror for the political, economic and ideological events in the city. These resin casts present a scale model of private swimming pools built during the Los Angeles–inspired optimism of Tehran’s urbanist project during the late 1960s. Following the Iranian Revolution from 1979, and the rise of modesty laws, these pools, drained and disused, now lie dormant.

Depicting these hollow architectural spaces, which are unused despite the spiralling cost of land and Tehran’s rapid urban densification, Ansarinia reflects on the significance of these empty pools. She states that their presence suggests ‘a wish for them to be filled and used in an unforeseen future but holds on to the memory of them once full’.

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