Sara Abbasian’s latest drawing series, “Cluster 5,” reveals a deteriorating world during the time of pandemic: disintegrating human bodies and animal corpses lying in mass graves, killed in large numbers, supposedly to prevent the spread of the virus.

The metaphoric juxtaposition of human/animal bodies with masked faces, imploded lungs, and metamorphosed beasts in the series is a grotesque déjà vu of the artist’s previous series such as “The Night-Blind Do Not Show Mercy to Each Other,” “Imperishable Gravity,” and especially “Epidemy.” It is as if instead of predicting the usual horrific nightmare, she is now representing the event itself.

The passionate assault of black pen on the white texture of the paper in order to depict frail, deformed subjects, with military uniforms, guns, and weakened lungs as they encounter piles of dead animals, make for an apocalyptic vision of a global crisis that has no regard for nationality or geography.

In the series, the transformation of the subject’s forms and the arrangement of the works correspond to the arbitrary and aggressive behavior of the virus, while it is not clear whether death has taken precedence over life or life has taken an altogether new form. Sara’s drawings sit on the border of absolute blackness and unbound whiteness so as to underline her usual concerns, namely violence, war, authority, and struggle. “Cluster 5” is the image of a pervasive distortion that will bring about a new order to the future of the world.