Games People Play

Games People Play

Karina Lax, 2025, ongoing

Games People Play examines power dynamics and personas through family life and play. The work investigates how games, performance of roles, expectation, memory and regression function as tools for understanding ourselves and social positions. Created in domestic spaces, the series invites reflection beyond the family, questioning wider power structures and engaging audiences through surprise, energy, and discomfort.

Demonstrating psychoanalytic theory and drawing on popular culture, children’s literature, current affairs, and personal experience I combine approaches - directing and performing to physically “collage” myself into existing scenes, documenting on impulse, and recreating moments or memories. Visualising tension with playfulness, I encourage viewers to consider both personal and systemic power dynamics to ultimately reflect on how we are shaped, and how we shape others.