By Pooneh Nedai
Editor-in-Chief of Shokran Magazine, Iran
TEHRAN: Mojtaba Ramzi (Moji Ramzi), an Iranian sculptor, creates meaningful and sometimes mythical works that connect ancient legends, cultural symbols, and today’s human experience. His sculptures are not only visually striking, but they also hold layered stories about life, death, and the ever-moving force of destiny.
The Visual Language and Symbols
Ramzi’s works are filled with forms that exist between myth and reality. Giant metal owls, powerful animals, or hybrid bronze creatures carry heavy, emotional themes. Yet, his designs always include a delicate detail or a subtle movement that balances these contrasts.
The Work: One Thousand and One Nights – The Battle of Life and Death
One of his most remarkable works is a sculpture inspired by the tales of One Thousand and One Nights. In it, a metal owl sits on a book, and the feather of Shahrzad is placed within the first fatal arrow—symbolizing the transfer of life and destiny from one being to another.
Behind it stand a thousand wooden arrows, each piercing through a piece of goatskin before being fixed into the wall. This clash of materials—wood, skin, and metal—raises questions: Could the torn skin symbolize Scheherazade’s own, who told stories to escape death? With each tale, did she experience both life and death within herself?
The Artist’s Manifesto at Fifty
This sculpture can be seen as Ramzi’s personal “manifesto” at the age of fifty—a stage when his spirit has matured, after hearing a thousand stories and enduring the arrows of life. Like a traveler who has passed through a difficult road, he now creates from a place of deep reflection and experience.
Connection to Heritage and Self-Creation
Ramzi continues the artistic legacy of his father. In works such as Noah’s Ark, his father placed a symbolic figure of himself on the ship’s stairway, showing that he had built the ark but was now ready to journey into the stories of the world. Ramzi continues this tradition, shaping characters like bulls, owls, and mythical women in lasting metal form.
Beyond Form and Material
Mojtaba Ramzi’s sculptures go beyond physical form. Beneath their solid, metallic surfaces lie complex stories and symbols: Scheherazade and death, books and storytelling, life and arrows, reflection and declaration. Each piece invites the viewer to search for deeper meaning between metal and myth. His art travels the space between legend and reality, experience and imagination—offering a way to rethink life in today’s world.
He is shaping a bright future for the art of sculpture in Iran.
