MOVAZI

2026 - ONGOING

Audiovisual Installation

Movazi is an ongoing series of interactive digital installations that treat the mirror as both material and metaphor. The work draws on ayeneh-kari, the mirror mosaics of Iranian sacred architecture, and on the recurring image of the mirror in Sufi poetry, where the polished heart reflects divine light and truth. Across the series, mirrors function as a technology of vision and a spiritual tool for self-confrontation, holding together Eastern traditions that read the mirror as a cosmological instrument and Western associations of illusion and vanity.

Each installation combines real-time media, shaders, particle systems, and generative visuals with reflective and transparent materials. Interactive systems respond to the presence and movement of the viewer, returning altered, delayed, and distorted versions of their own image. Generative processes animate the unseen energies that folklore attaches to mirrors as thresholds to another world. The result is an immersive, responsive environment where perception slows and the boundary between body and image dissolves.

The series builds on Ali Phi's longstanding engagement with reflection, mysticism, and selfhood, extending a thread that runs through his practice in video, sound, and code. Movazi remains in development, unfolding across successive installations that expand its conceptual and technical range. As an Iranian-born artist, Phi draws directly from his own heritage, research, and language, engaging Persian and West Asian traditions from lived cultural experience while treating references beyond that context critically and with attention to their origins.

The project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.