Ali Meer Azimi | "Lipstick to the Void": Dastan:Outside [Focus Room 02]

Dastan presents “Lipstick to the Void”, a focus room installation by Ali Meer Azimi’s installation as part of Dastan:Outside projects. Opening on May 29, 2026 and continuing through June 19. A variation of “Lipstick to the Void” was first presented by Dastan at Liste Art Fair Basel 2022.

Ali Meer Azimi’s “Lipstick to the Void” is centered around a very specific moment in time: the split second when disaster happens, what he refers to as “the moment of impact.” Developed from his research into the Iran–Iraq War, the work was inspired by moments in which Iraqi electronic disruption technologies disrupted Iranian radar systems. As the radar surface turned into an opaque white field, the red warning sirens sounded and bombs began to fall. Rather than reconstructing the event directly, Azimi translates this rupture into reflective and transparent surfaces, sound, and spatial installation, remaining close to the sensory and psychological conditions of war rather than its literal imagery.

The work is deeply embedded with distortion and fragmented memory, where visibility collapses into interference and perception becomes unstable. Reflective surfaces continuously shift the viewer back into the work, while white opaque forms resemble failed radar screens, obscured signals, or erased information. Memory appears less as a fixed historical narrative and more as scattered sensory residue.

Although not cinematic in a literal sense, the installation functions through cinematic sequencing, where atmosphere overrides narrative. Sound, spatial movement, and abrupt visual contrasts create the sensation of moving through suspended fragments of an unfolding event. Azimi avoids direct representation in favor of tension, anticipation, and sensory accumulation.

While rooted in the historical context of the war, the work feels deeply contemporary in its engagement with surveillance, technological warfare, disrupted communication systems, and the instability of the present moment. The installation approaches war as something physical and atmospheric, experienced through vibration, sound, and bodily tension before it is intellectually processed.