Rules Are Not Neutral: Play As Sense-Making, Acts Of Resistance, And Imagining Otherwise

This exhibition brings together a range of analog games – including board, card, role-playing, and other participatory works – that engage social and political realities in different ways. The works span widely circulated commercial games to independently produced projects, one-of-a-kind artworks by artists, faculty, alumni, and students, and materials drawn from UC Santa Cruz Special Collections and Archives.

In part, the exhibition challenges the persistent assumption that games and play are detached from social and political life. On the contrary, game designers and artists across diverse perspectives and positions have long used play to engage questions of social systems, lived experience, and how power operates. The works are encountered in multiple ways: as objects, as systems, as artworks, and as experiences that unfold unpredictably through interaction.

Ultimately, the exhibition asks us to consider not only how games represent the world, but how they shape our engagement with it – and how through play, the social and political systems they model might be understood, challenged, and reimagined.

“The imagination is an instrument of change.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin, author

Gallery reception: May 15, 2026 — 1 to 4pm.
Art Friday is available every Friday from noon to 4pm.