A satirical reimagining of chess through corporate hierarchy.

Originating in India as chaturanga, chess started with highly ornamental figurines. When the game migrated into Europe, chess characters shifted from decorative to simplified forms, losing detail in favor of simplicity and modernity. In Western hands, the set became more clean and geometric. Pieces were made uniform and standardized for competitive play. The game was recentered around royal hierarchy, with King and Queen emerging as prominent roles. This obscured and erased much of the earlier Eastern influence that shaped chess's origins.

Western hierarchy has persisted into the modern West. While no longer under the status of royalty, roles and influence are still distributed unequally in institutions such as corporations, and the weight of this divide often results in the erasure of certain peoples.

In Corporate Chess: Climb the Corporate Ladder or Be Crushed, we acknowledge this legacy. Our pieces exaggerate and satirize Western modernization in design through a more extreme emphasis on blocky and rigid forms. This reflects not just the impersonal aesthetic of the corporate office, but critiques the West's history of simplifying other cultures and people of their own.