Masha Masoumi

Ryan Stark Lilienthal, MGSA MFA in Design ‘2023

I recently returned from a two-month German-American Fulbright-funded installation project in Hesse, Germany conducted in collaboration with education science researchers at Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main. The installation developed from  my MGSA MFA Design thesis and sought to cultivate interconnectedness, empathy, and belonging by employing new thinking about participatory memory practices that bring people from diverse backgrounds together. I designed interactive workshops involving approximately 150 German high school and elementary school students from six different schools. Through the workshops, students created illuminated porcelain bricks that then formed collaborative memory sculptures. The installation Tonwerk (Clay Factory) was exhibited for a month at the Hessisches State Archive in Darmstadt. The project examined forced labor during the Holocaust at the Tonwerk Heppenheim factory, close to the schools. Many of the students, and some of their teachers, had no understanding of what transpired in their communities. Some students also participated in a memorial design competition, while others researched Aryanized property taken from families who were deported to concentration and extermination camps. 

As its starting point, the installation drew inspiration from a 1990’s German high school student study into Tonwerk Heppenheim. In the process of extensively researching the abuse of forced laborers in producing ceramics, such as bricks, students cultivated an in-depth historical understanding of the Holocaust. I found the students’ research particularly meaningful, given that my grandmother’s uncle was one of the Tonwerk Heppenheim forced laborers before he was deported to Poland and murdered with his wife and son for being Jewish. With the earlier fact-based history project in mind, my intention in this participatory memory-based art installation sought to illuminate the emotional resonance that diverse communities can draw from the traumatic past of others. I realized during the study that the children of the immigrant and refugee communities in this region seemed particularly responsive to the project.

Memory studies scholars like Michael Rothberg, who explores multidirectional memory, encourage a shift from competing claims of victimhood between communities with traumatic pasts to learning from each other’s heritage of trauma. Similarly, Clint Smith in his 2022 study of Germany’s memory culture observes, “I learned that the way the country [Germany] remembers this genocide [the Holocaust] is the subject of ongoing debate—a debate that is highly relevant to fights about public memory taking place in the U.S.” (Smith, Clint, “Monuments to the Unthinkable: America still can’t figure out how to memorialize the sins of our history. What can we learn from Germany?”, The Atlantic, vol. 330, no. 5, 2022, pp. 22-41.)

The results of this project will further guide my own art and design practice and will hopefully elucidate and advance approaches to participatory memory practices and multidirectional memory used by others. Significant takeaways included the students’ attentive engagement in Holocaust memory work through non-traditional, tactile learning using clay to shape a purposeful remembrance experience. This qualitative observation applied equally across gender and age, from first-grade students to ninth through thirteenth-grade students–including Hauptschule, Realschule, and Gymnasium students. What’s more, native-born German students as well as refugee and immigrant students shared positive reflections on the meaning of the project to their own lives. 

Gratefully, I am participating in the upcoming Art Against Racism group exhibition, “Freedoms Reframed: Art on the Edge of the Constitution,” at the William Trenton House in Trenton, New Jersey, from June 13 to July 12, 2026. In this exhibit, I hope to bring lessons learned in Germany to help illuminate through art and design the freedom lost in the shadow of our Constitution.

All photographs by Konstanin Weber © HLA. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt.

On March 10, the Mason Gross Design community welcomed Hilary Greenbaum, a New York–based creative director, designer, and writer who has led design and brand creative at the Whitney Museum of American Art since 2012. Prior to joining the Whitney, Greenbaum designed covers and feature stories for The New York Times Magazine and wrote the design column Who Made That?, which explored the overlooked designers behind everyday objects. Her work spans editorial design, institutional branding, exhibition graphics, and large-scale cultural campaigns.

In her talk, Greenbaum traced the trajectory of her career, beginning with her upbringing in New Jersey and her early education in design. She reflected on the contrast between modernist design training, where designers are expected to function as neutral transmitters of information, and the more experimental approaches she later encountered in graduate school at CalArts. This tension between clarity and expression became a recurring theme in her practice.

One of the projects she discussed from this period was Wilshire by 8, a thesis project that challenged the idea that information design is neutral. The project mapped Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles eight different ways using eight personality perspectives derived from the Myers-Briggs framework. By translating psychological traits into visual mapping strategies, Greenbaum demonstrated how perspective shapes the way information is organized and understood.

After graduate school, Greenbaum moved to New York and began working in editorial and exhibition design, producing books and gallery catalogs for artists. She later joined The New York Times Magazine, where she worked on weekly covers and feature stories and helped design the annual Year in Ideas issue. During this time she also created the blog series Who Made That?, which investigated the designers behind familiar objects and eventually became a recurring column in the printed magazine.

In 2012, Greenbaum joined the Whitney Museum of American Art as Director of Graphic Design. At the Whitney, her role expanded from editorial storytelling to overseeing the visual identity of a major cultural institution. She described how her team works across departments—from marketing and exhibitions to digital platforms and retail—ensuring that the museum’s visual language remains consistent across hundreds of projects each year.

Central to the Whitney’s identity is the responsive W, a flexible logo system developed with the design studio Experimental Jetset. Rather than functioning as a fixed mark, the W adapts to the dimensions of the artwork or layout surrounding it. This approach reflects the museum’s mission to foreground artists and their work while allowing the institution’s identity to remain dynamic.

Greenbaum also shared examples of exhibition campaigns and graphic systems developed for shows at the museum, including projects that experimented with typography, color, and spatial graphics within the Whitney’s galleries. She discussed the challenge of designing the Whitney Biennial, an exhibition that often lacks finalized images during early promotion because many participating artists create new work specifically for the show. In response, her team developed flexible visual identities that can function both with and without artwork imagery.

Throughout the lecture, Greenbaum emphasized that design practice evolves through experimentation and adaptation. Moving between editorial publishing, journalism, and institutional design allowed her to develop a practice that balances systems thinking with creative interpretation.

She concluded by encouraging students to remain open to unexpected paths in their careers. Design, she suggested, is less about choosing a single discipline than about learning how to translate ideas across different contexts—whether that means designing a magazine spread, a museum identity, or the graphics that guide visitors through an exhibition space.

Reception: Feb 12, 6–9 pm

On view: Feb 12 – Feb 28

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The second part of A Simultaneity Mark opened with a packed and animated reception, bringing together faculty, students, and visitors from across the Mason Gross community. The galleries carried a steady flow of conversations, with design and visual art audiences naturally overlapping throughout the evening. The event felt lively, social, and deeply engaged.

Each room constructed a different mode of experience. Chiyu Zheng’s interactive installation Gestic transformed subtle human hand movements into responsive texts, encouraging viewers to become aware of their own gestures and presence. Sabre introduced a shift in tempo, where Mahsa Masoumi’s work centered on duration, narrative, and repetition, drawing visitors into a slower, more reflective encounter shaped by image, sound, and pattern. Yuxuan Hu’s installations explored language perception and memory through generative imagery, producing visuals that appeared and dissolved in response to sound.

Beyond the design spaces, surrounding rooms of the gallery presented visual art works, creating a broader exhibition context and reinforcing the interdisciplinary atmosphere of the night. The exhibition remained open to the public through February 28, extending the reception’s energy into an ongoing viewing experience.

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Chiyu Zheng

GESTIC

Material: Media Installation, TouchDesigner

Gestic translates everyday human gestures into live visual responses. Movement becomes a quiet language shaped by habit, culture, and presence.

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Mahsa Masoumi

SABR

Material: Video with audio, latch-hook weaving

Sabr means patience. The work unfolds the traditional Persian story of Zaal and Simorgh through image, sound, pattern, and repetition, inviting viewers to linger with care, endurance, and time.

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Yuxuan Hu

What I See When You Are Silent, and How Your Memory Finds Its Form

material: Installation, TouchDesigner, Python

This project responds to sound by generating images that appear, linger, and fade. The work reflects on memory as something that remains, even after the digital form disappears.

Reception: Jan 21, 6–9 pm

On view: Jan 20 – Feb 05

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The first part of the MFA Design Thesis exhibition “A Simultaneity Mark” opened in the Mason Gross Galleries with strong energy and a full room. Faculty, students, and visitors moved fluidly through the galleries, creating the kind of atmosphere shows hope for but rarely achieve. The event felt genuinely communal rather than ceremonial.

Each room carried a distinct spatial and visual character. Peyton Chiang’s installation title emphasized scale and material presence, drawing viewers into a work that unfolded through movement and proximity. Anukriti Kaushik’s title created a striking contrast, combining sculptural forms and printed elements that encouraged slower, more attentive looking. Asem Kiyalova’s work title introduced a different rhythm, where objects, surfaces, and projection intersected to produce a layered visual experience.

What made the night memorable was not just the individual projects, but the shared presence of the Mason Gross community as both graduate programs shared the galleries. Design and visual art audiences overlapped, conversations extended across disciplines, and the exhibition operated as a social as well as visual space. The show remained open to the public through February 5, sustaining that initial momentum beyond the reception.

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Peyton Chiang

For Convening (we must remember the beauty of sharing each other’s wits), 2026

Polyester chiffon, double georgette, cotton thread (29 x 18 x 14 Feet)

For Care (within me there are many homes), 2026

Maintenance equipment, plywood stool, archival inkjet print, Durational performance

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Anukriti Kaushik

Archron’s Dream, 2026

Laser print on paper (11 x 13.5 Inches)

Torso of Standing Female Figure, 2026

Plaster, concrete (6 x 6 x 70 Inches)

Head of Standing Female Figure, 2026

Plaster, concrete (6 x 6 x 67 Inches)

Seated Mother Goddess, 2026

Plaster, concrete (6×6 x 65 Inches)

Descent, 2026

Found metal, mirror, plaster, concrete (6 x 6 x 50 Inches)

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Asem Kiyalova

HELD AT ONCE, 2026

materials: 3D printed resin, Paper, Vinyl, Projection

December 4, 2025

On December 4th, the MFA Design second-year students held their semester review, focused on clarifying and strengthening the direction of their thesis projects ahead of the January–February exhibition period.

The goal of this review was to solidify and refine the aims and specifics of each thesis project, with particular attention to human interaction, physical presence, and exhibition display. Students were asked to present a proof of concept, prototype, mock-up, or work-in-progress at real scale. Rather than showing a complete thesis, the review emphasized testing how an audience might experience and engage with a portion of the work.

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Chiyu Zheng

Presence invites participants to interact with an installation through full-body gestures rather than handheld devices. The project responds to how screen-based technologies train bodies to shrink into small, constrained postures. By asking participants to occupy space with their whole bodies, the work reframes technology as something expansive and physically engaging, restoring a sense of scale and presence often lost in digital interaction.

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Peyton Chiang

Peyton ’s thesis explores the relationship between corporeal beings and ancestral beings, examining how memory, ritual, and lineage move through physical form. His work draws from ancestral practices and material culture, translating them into sculptural and spatial experiments. Through layered structures and translucent materials, the project investigates how bodies act as vessels for inherited knowledge, belief, and presence. The work-in-progress installation presented at the review focused on scale, verticality, and atmosphere, offering a prototype for how audiences might physically encounter and move around these ancestral narratives.

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Anukriti Kaushik

Anukriti’s project explores fertility figurines from the Indus Valley Civilization and how they shifted from everyday objects into museum artifacts. Working with archival material like excavation photos, maps, receipts, and letters, she looks at how repetition, documentation, and displacement change an object’s meaning. Through repeated sculptural reproductions, the figurines slowly transform again, breaking, mutating, and taking on new identities beyond their original role as symbols of fertility.

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Yuxuan Hu

This digital art project transforms live sound into visual form using real-time interaction. Audience members speak into a microphone, and their voices are translated into dynamic visual particles that slowly fade over time. Each interaction produces a unique, temporary visual result, emphasizing ephemerality, participation, and the physical presence of sound.

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Asem Kiyalova

This project challenges the Western calendar’s linear, productivity-driven structure of time. By questioning how time is measured and organized, the work invites audiences to imagine alternative, shared, and more intuitive ways of marking life. The calendar becomes a speculative space for rethinking planning, value, and connection beyond capitalist frameworks.

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Mahsa Masoumi

Sabr explores patience as a transformative force through storytelling with Persian carpet motifs. Anchored in the Persian epic of Zaal and Simorgh, the project weaves cultural symbolism, material practice, and narrative into a contemporary design context. The work examines how time, care, and repetition shape both stories and objects.

Art After Manufactured Certainty : November 4, 2025

On November 4, the Mason Gross Design community hosted Burak Arikan, an artist, designer, and researcher whose work investigates how predictive systems shape culture, behavior, and power, and how art can intervene. Arikan’s practice spans network mapping, data politics, and collective intelligence, exposing the invisible economies and infrastructures that govern our digital lives. His projects have been exhibited at MoMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and major biennials in Venice, Berlin, Istanbul, and São Paulo. He is also the founder of Graph Commons, a collaborative platform for mapping complex data networks.

Arikan began his talk by tracing the shift from 20th-century mass media: newspapers, television, radio, to today’s algorithmic platforms. What once appeared as an open social web has transformed into an economy of prediction, where every click, post, and search is harvested to anticipate future behavior. “Speech is still free,” he said. “The problem is that cognition is engineered.” For Arikan, this condition of manufactured certainty defines our current era: a system that turns uncertainty into confidence, not to inform us, but to control us.

Through his projects, Arikan turns these predictive systems into artistic material. In one work, he developed software to forecast his own bank transactions, stamping each receipt with the algorithm’s probability. By following its predictions, he demonstrated how predictive systems can fabricate the very futures they claim to foresee. In another project, he built a platform that allowed users to “IPO themselves,” issuing shares of their identities in a speculative social marketplace. Friendship, labor, and visibility became currency, reflecting how social media monetizes our relationships.

Arikan also discussed Social Contracts (2013), a project that used blockchain technology long before NFTs became mainstream. Instead of treating digital tokens as collectibles, he framed them as social sculptures, publicly visible, constantly evolving networks of ownership and connection. Each transfer of an artwork generated new relationships, mapping the circulation of power within digital culture.

Across his body of work, Arikan outlined four key principles that guide his practice: prediction, feedback, transparency, and critical friction. Together, these form what he calls Predictive Realism, an artistic approach that examines and reshapes the predictive mechanisms embedded in everyday life. His work draws from traditions of Institutional Critique, Social Sculpture, and Fluxus, expanding them for a world governed by data and algorithms.

Arikan closed with a reflection on uncertainty as a space of freedom. If our futures are being pre-written by machines, art can restore ambiguity, reintroducing the unknown as a site of imagination and agency. “Art can reveal the infrastructures that claim to predict us,” he said, “and widen the futures we are allowed to have.”