For Melik Ohanian, revealed in the 1990s, art represents a powerful aesthetic device for critical inquiry into the world that doesn't ignore exhibition frameworks, but rather assumes them as media. This means that exhibition spaces are also questioned, along with historical frameworks. In his practice, which includes a wide variety of media, there is still a recurring interest in scientific, social and political facts, particularly the history of work and the working class.

Following on from this focus, in 2014 the artist conceived a sculptural installation entitled - Girls of Chilwell - Suspended Acting
. The installation consists of three plaster sculptures on a human scale, based on images found in photographic archives from the First World War depicting three scenes of work carried out by the female working class of the Chilwell Armaments Factory in England. These female munitions workers, exposed to the nitroglycerine needed to fill the cartridges, suffered a series of highly damaging side effects, including their skin turning yellow. As a vasodilator, the nitroglycerin also exposed them to intense levels of oxygen during their work.

A critical memorial, this sculpture reconstructs a dramatic episode in women's labour history that has lain dormant in the archives for decades. While the realism of the figures and work objects helps to present the forgotten fact, their white colour, given by the plaster, transforms them into pale, rigid, lifeless objects, which seem to be diluted on the white wall of the exhibition room. The exhibition space is thus recruited and its silence invaded by a sense of human violence and exploitation implicit in the reconstructed narrative.