In Mahsa Aleph’s works, the physicality of the material takes precedence over its function as a medium: salt nullifies the function of the text at the cost of its preservation. Sulfur burns the words and tissues wipe away the self-portrait. Painting is not painterly anymore; it is, rather, a mere means that is exploited in making the “Aleph Archive”: first, the artist has made the self-portrait, and then she has manipulated and distorted it. What if poetry and painting are nothing but imitations in which neither an object is made nor is an object truly described? Along the lines of illegibility and interruption in reading presented in “Aleph’s Library,” the audience comes across a sense of loss as well as the narrative quality of material—apparently. The works of these installations have been deprived of their defining qualities: the self-portrait is devoid of identity, the book is emptied of words, and the document is void of truth. Aleph nullifies and devaluates; she takes away the purpose of a text and the sublimity of a painting. Later, however, the remnants of what she has taken away recur in a new way.