Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi

posted by Ellis O'Connor May 21, 2013

Something very different, but these artists have collaborated on an ongoing exhibition titled ‘Seep’, which is an installation of video projections, objects and prints. One of the videos in the installation incorporates documents from the British Petroleum archive relating to a film that was produced by the Anglo Iranian Oil Company in 1948 to present the oil industry’s modernising effect on Iran. I love the images of the close up oil seep, even though it is such a serious political subject, it still creates a beautiful image as part of the series.

Their approach is very political minded and has produced a broad range of works based on this one concerning factor. A second video follows the artists as they travel to different sites in south west Iran – the geographical site that the BP archive registers – capturing images of natural oil seeps as they ooze from the ground. The notion of the oil seep – crude oil materialising naturally, but beyond historical purpose, disregarding even the ground over and through which it spreads – informs Tabatabai and Afrassiabi’s reading of these two archives and implicitly traces connections between them.

http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/nasrin-tabatabai-and-babak-afrassiabi/