Archives of Oil: Future Relics, (2021- ongoing). Multimedia installation with photographic prints, adhesive photo vinyls, vinyl text, and archival documents.
Some of the photographs are sourced and altered from the British Petroleum Archives. Copyright the artist and the BP p.l.c.
“Archives of Oil: Future Relics” is an ongoing multimedia installation that is conceived as an ‘archival assembly’ that was first installed as part of my solo exhibition “Hiding in Plain Sight: Archives of Oil” at Centre Clark, Montréal in Fall 2021. With photographic materials retrieved from the British Petroleum (BP) along with other archival documents collected over five years of extensive archival research, I examine the relationship between colonial archival practices of documenting the extraction of oil and the media and cultural infrastructures enabling this process during the British controlled oil operations in Iran. This growing archival assembly traces how the petro-utopia of extraction was visualized with and through the larger media infrastructure of the oil company shaped by an assemblage of film units, print publications, staff photographers, amateur photographers, and audiences abroad -among other social and political actors- who consumed oil; not only as a material commodity but also as an image.
“Archives of Oil: Future Relics” is part of my doctoral project which investigates an overlooked visual analysis of the role of photography as an embodied technology of petrocultural visuality and eradication which worked in tandem with the larger extractive industry in Iran and the larger Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. By conducting a visual ethnography of oil, and with a particular focus on the historical ethnographic photographic archives produced by British Petroleum, this project examines the visual representational regimes of oil through the nexus between colonial modernity, social history of oil, and media infrastructure. As a filmmaker and artist working at the intersection of documentary media practice and visual arts research, “Archives of Oil: Future Relics” is guided by the archive as a conceptual prism, material object, and imaginative practice. It seeks to examine the archival temporalities and evidentiary aesthetics enmeshed in the ethnographic photography practices in the early colonial explorations of oil in MENA, and Iran in particular. This archival assembly comprises of large scale photographic prints, digital collages, archival documents, and wall text.
Reviews:
"Sanaz Sohrabi, Hiding in Plain Sight: Archives of Oil," Review by Emmanuelle Choquette, Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION, Summer 2022
“The Tenant' — Joshua Schwebel and 'Hiding in Plain Sight: Archives of Oil' — Sanaz Sohrabi," Review by Saelan Twardy, C magazine 151, Spring 2022
Exhibition text written by Amber Berson: please visit Centre Clark, here.
This project has been made possible with generous support from Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC). I also extend my gratitude to Centre Clark’s team for all their care and support.