Research Statement
Ali Masoumzadeh
My research investigates transformation as both a material process and a lived condition. I work across drawing, painting, installation, and narrative structures to create visual systems that resist fixed interpretation and remain open to change. Rather than presenting stable images, my projects invite viewers to move, rotate, flip, and reorient forms, turning the act of looking into an active decision rather than a passive reception. This approach reflects my interest in how meaning shifts when bodies, objects, and environments are allowed to exist in multiple states at once.
At the center of my practice is the figure, understood not as a static representation but as a site of negotiation between observation and invention. I draw from anatomical study as a structural vocabulary while allowing distortion, fragmentation, and recombination to guide the development of form. In this process, the body becomes a space where emotional and psychological conditions can take shape. The figures that emerge in my work are neither fully human nor fully animal, but transitional beings that carry narrative weight across categories. They reflect the tension between what is inherited and what can be transformed.
My research is shaped by experiences of displacement, separation, and the instability of belonging. Growing up within an authoritarian system and later living at a distance from family and homeland created an awareness of how identity is continually reconstructed under pressure. These conditions do not appear in my work as literal political statements. Instead, they form the emotional climate in which the work develops. Transformation, fragmentation, and reconstruction become recurring processes through which I examine resilience and adaptation.
Material experimentation plays a central role in this research. I deliberately work with accessible and flexible materials such as cardboard, wood, Xerox prints, digital drawing, and fabricated objects. These materials allow for repetition, revision, and reconstruction without the constraints of permanence or preciousness. The principle of collage, understood as the act of assembling, breaking apart, and rebuilding forms, operates across both physical and digital media in my practice. Through this iterative process, images evolve through cycles of destruction and renewal rather than linear completion.
In recent work, my research has expanded into spatial environments that merge two-dimensional imagery with architectural structures. My MFA thesis project, an interactive installation composed of rotating panels, embodies this direction by creating a space in which images continuously transform as viewers move through the environment. The installation emphasizes instability as a productive condition, demonstrating how form can shift, break apart, and reconnect in response to physical interaction. This work positions transformation not as a metaphor but as a tangible experience.
Ultimately, my research explores how art can function as a system for understanding change. I am interested in the moment when a form becomes unfamiliar, when identity begins to shift, and when new possibilities emerge from disruption. Through drawing, installation, and narrative construction, I build environments that allow transformation to remain visible and ongoing. My work does not aim to resolve instability but to recognize it as a necessary condition for growth, empathy, and renewal.