Sanaz Sohrabi is a researcher of visual culture and artist-filmmaker. Sohrabi works with essay film and installation as her means of research to explore the shifting and migratory paths between still and moving images, situating a singular image in a continuum of historical relations and archival temporalities. Sohrabi’s work engages with the politics of recovery in photographic archives and the role of photography and film as technologies of public-making and subject positioning. Since 2017, Sohrabi has done extensive archival research at the British Petroleum archives to engage with the history of photography and film practices of the British controlled oil operations in Iran, conducting a visual ethnography of resource extraction in relation to the media infrastructures of BP. Sohrabi received her BFA from University of Tehran College of Fine Arts (2011) and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a merit scholarship (2014). Currently a doctoral candidate and supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture at Concordia University, Montréal, Sohrabi’s doctoral project explores the contested historical role that visual representations of oil have played in shaping postcolonial sovereignty and resource nationalism in Iran. Her doctoral project is conceived as a trilogy of essay films, the first episode of which “One Image, Two Acts,” has been internationally screened and exhibited since November 2020 and has been widely acclaimed. The second episode of this trilogy of films is titled “Scenes of Extraction” and was commissioned by VOX Centre de l'image contemporaine in Montréal and premiered at Berlinale Forum Expanded in February 2023. “Scenes of Extraction” is currently touring festivals and museums.
Sohrabi’s work has widely screened and exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions, museums, and film festivals including: Berlinale Forum Expanded, International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Iran Cinéma Vérité Festival (Winner of International Mid-length), IndieLisboa (Silvestre Section Best Short Film), Valdivia International Film Festival Chile (Special Jury Mention), Mimesis Documentary Film Festival (Best Documentary Short), Ann Arbor Film Festival (Jury Award), Montréal International Documentary Film Festival (RIDM), Sheffield Doc/Fest, 30_70 International Documentary Film Festival (Main jury prize), SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Centre Clark Montréal, VIDEONALE 16 Kunstmuseum Bonn, European Media Arts Festival, Osnabrück, Kasseler DokFest, Germany (nominated for Golden Key Award), Athens International Film and Video Festival, Fiva 06 Buenos Aires (First Prize For Short Film), Images Festival, Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, Cairo Film and Video Festival, Atlanta Contemporary, Complex Images at Kino Bern Cinema, Switzerland, and Beirut Art Center, among others. Fellowships and artist residency awards include Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture Doctoral Fellowship (2021-2023), Akademie Der Künste Der Welt (2023), Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin (2019), Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2019), RAW Académie Session 9 (2022), SOMA Summer School Ciudad de México (2017), Est-Nord-Est résidence d’artistes (2016), Vermont Studio Center (2015), and Chicago Artist Coalition Bolt Program (2014-2015), among others.
As a media maker and research-based artist, Sohrabi often occupies multiple strands of production, mediums, and methods at once which allow for a coalescence of modalities, sites and conditions of production to emerge. Sohrabi has presented her writing and research at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin, Visible Evidence Conference Frankfurt, American University of Beirut, Stavanger Museum Norway, Global Emergent Media Lab Montréal, and College Arts Association Washington D.C. Her recent essays include: “Ruminations on Petropublics Across Borders,” published by Kunstlicht Art Journal in Amsterdam and “Petropublics Across Borders: Mapping OPEC’s Visual Cultures of Decolonization” published in the 35th Ljubljana Biennale Reader, edited by Exit Frame Collective. Sohrabi is also a member of the research group “Oil Cultures from the Middle East and Latin America (OCMELA),” with whom she has published a conversation with Murtaza Vali, titled “Petromobilities in the Global South,” released by Museumsforlaget in Norway in March 2022.
Sanaz Sohrabi is primed to teach courses across artistic research methods, history of photography, recovering and reviving the colonial archives, image theory and visual economy. Sohrabi is currently writing her doctoral dissertation at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Montréal and welcomes the possibilities of working with BFA and MFA students in different educational capacities. For general inquiries please kindly send an email request:
Email address: s.sohrabi.studio (at) gmail (dot) com. I do not have any social media profiles/accounts. Do write me an email; I’d be happy to receive your words and thoughts from near and far.