Butter cowboy sculpture shows how power degrades over time

A 500-pound butter sculpture of a cowboy on horseback sits at Contemporary Calgary, slowly transforming. The work is intentional — artist Ghazaleh Avarzamani designed the piece to degrade throughout the five-month exhibition, with cracks forming as the material responds to temperature and environment.

Avarzamani's "Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return" exhibit uses butter as a metaphor for how power changes and loses its hold over time. The sculpture recreates a Monopoly game piece — a man riding a horse — and is paired with Monopoly-themed imagery throughout the gallery space, including a grid floor and flags that act like Monopoly cards dictating moves and power gains or losses.

"Material carries a lot of messages for me," the artist said. "I need the material to be ephemeral. I need it to be responsive to the environment, or to the people."

Curator Mona Filip said Avarzamani's use of impermanent materials reflects her broader artistic practice. "She wants them to be affected by the site, by temperature, by the warmth of people gathering around them," Filip explained. "The transformation, sometimes failure of these materials are very much part of the work."

Avarzamani noted that butter's history is itself symbolic — for centuries it was used for royal ceremonies and rituals before becoming a food. The exhibition draws on that legacy, including a reference to a 3,000-pound butter sculpture of Prince Edward displayed at the British Empire Exhibition in 1924–1925 to showcase Canada's power.

The sculpture was made with local Alberta dairy and created with help from sculptor Ryan Kurylo. As the weeks pass, the cracks will multiply — and the art, according to Avarzamani, will truly begin.