Statement:

A lion's tear strikes the iron body of a car, crushing and shattering it; yet the accident does not unfold in chaos. 

Everything happens with such calmness that it seems as though this has always been its way.

What makes this calmness possible is not the subsiding of the accident, but a transformation in the relations between things. 

The car is no longer simply a means of transportation, but prey for the lion to hunt and weep upon. 

A tear is no longer merely a sign of sorrow; it becomes a force that can break iron apart. 

And calligraphic script, rather than simply serving as a means of recording speech, becomes the very fabric of the image, taking part in the unfolding of the accident. 

The accident emerges from these transformations, while what is transformed is not the subjects themselves, but the roles and relations between them.///

This transformation, evident in the narratives of Masoumi's works, also takes place in the making of the images. 

Forms emerge not from volume and shadow, but from the accumulation and extension of calligraphic strokes. 

Script is not something with which the image has been drawn; it is what the image itself is made of. 

The tear, the body, the car, and the figure are all shaped from the same material—a material that determines not only their appearance, but also the quality of their presence.

Rather than inviting the viewer to search for meaning or decipher the codes of the image, Masoumi's works ask us to pause over their qualities, relations, and connections. 

The longer the gaze lingers on these works, the less the accident itself comes into focus, and what gradually reveals itself is the image itself: an image whose warp and weft have been reconfigured before any event takes place. 

For this reason, the accident in these works is never the beginning of the story, but only the moment when the image reveals what it has already built within itself.

Ali Ansari 

Summer 2026