Petroaesthetics and Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia and North Africa

Petroaesthetics and Contemporary SWANA Art
Petroaesthetics and Contemporary Southwest Asian and North African Art refers to a body of artistic works and cultural production in the SWANA region that engage with the material, visual, and political dimensions of the petroleum industry. The term petroaesthetics encompasses works that incorporate petroleum-derived materials and oil-related infrastructure or critically engage with the socioeconomic and environmental effects of oil extraction and consumption. Petroaesthetics includes a range of artistic approaches, primarily including photography, painting, video art, sculpture, installation, and performance. Artists reflect on themes spanning anywhere from the physical presence of oil in the environment to the issues surrounding the historical legacy of oil-motivated or resource-motivated foreign intervention and the rise of petro-states. Contemporary SWANA art is heavily intertwined with oil and petroleum subject matters and typically includes postcolonial critique and ecological consciousness. Artists working within this framework draw attention to the environmental degradation caused by oil extraction, the socio-political tensions surrounding resource control, or the visual iconography of the oil industry. These works contribute to an ongoing criticism of the role of oil and its modern implications, inevitably impacting life and cultural identity in the region.
Terminology
This section defines several relevant terms that will be used in this article.
1. SWANA: Artists described in this article are either located in or working in diaspora from the South West Asia and North Africa region. This term is important because it uses objective geographic markers as identifiers. This region may also be called the Middle East, a term with euro-centric origins by placing Europe center. Artists from the SWANA region may live there or live in diaspora with familial or ethnic ties to the region. The SWANA region is large and encompasses artists of a plethora of different identities and may identify themselves differently.
2. Petroaesthetics: This term refers to the body of work created by artists considering the petroleum industry and effects of the prevalence of oil throughout daily life.
Rise of Petroaesthetics
The rise of Petroaesthetics coincided directly with the rise of the oil industry. The oil industry began first in the mid nineteenth century in North Africa, and was discovered in the SWANA region in the early twentieth century. Oil was discovered first in Persia in 1908 and in surrounding Middle Eastern countries in the following years. The rise of and and their pursuit to obtain control of natural resources has comprised the last century of Petroleum Politics. In the SWANA region especially, oil fosters unrest as politicians and industry fight for control of production and profit. This disruption incited interest from artists engaging with their surroundings. The earliest examples of artists considering oil was during the mid-twentieth century photographs by Latif Al Ani and Houshang Pezeshknia, employed by oil companies in Iraq and Iran. Artists from SWANA, in particular, have taken up the role of creating symbols potent enough to break through into public consciousness while representing the social and political impacts of oil across the region. Artists utilize symbols like the smoke cloud to create visual content. Many petro artists, like Attia similarly use abnormal mediums in their work, especially crude oil itself, to tackle the complexity of such a wide scale topic.
Installation
In petro-related installations and environmental art, these works often simulate oil spills, refineries, or altered landscapes, creating immersive site-specific works that highlight the scale of extraction. Artist Faig Ahmed applies this to his work, taking old carpets and textiles and reconstructing the Azerbaijani patterns to mimic the movement and appearance of oil spills. His piece Osho from 2015 depicts hand woven carpet designs melting away into a pool of oil and water, signifying the relationship between disruptions in the physical environment caused by western interference and indigenous art forms. Her 2018 visual installation titled Diver, “captures the movements of four synchronised swimmers in the night waters, possibly the Gulf, wearing iridescent head-to-toe bodysuits, goggles, and full makeup, and performing a choreographed routine to an early recording of a traditional pearl-diving song.”
Works
Artists have engaged with oil in a variety of methods based on their lived experience. The sections below address recurring themes petroartists explore in their work.
Oil and desire
One of the earliest acknowledged petro aesthetic pieces is Matter and Mind, a 1977 piece by Japanese artist Noriyuki Haraguchi. This piece opened in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in October of 1977. It featured a large basin of oil serving as a reflecting pool to viewers. It was later shown at several other galleries. In 2017, Shirin Sabahi, a Berlin based Iranian visual artist and filmmaker contacted Haraguchi and organized his return to Tehran for the reinstallation of his piece forty years later. “The installation consists of a 14 feet by 21 feet rectangle filled with 1,190 gallons of oil.” To Mind and Matter had personal significance from visits as a child. “One day, a young Sabahi lingered before Matter and Mind with a friend. As they approached its shiny surface, Sabahi insisted that the monolith was solid, made of glass. Her friend demurred. To prove her point, Sabahi threw a crumpled-up bus ticket at its surface. The paper promptly sank.” This work reflects the 6th century BC uses of oil as a ‘miracle liquid’. This exhibition, “takes a speculative, poetic look back at the presence of the modern age of petroleum, which has lasted for roughly one hundred years.” As a child he, “witnessed the throes of the most seismic period in Saudi history - the Kingdom’s oil boom and the tensions between religion and power.”
This is not his first piece to utilize LED boxes to display an X-ray, his 2003 Shatta and 2017, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2008, 2006 Illuminations also use this, however this is the first to also confront petroleum. In later 2017 pieces, Tesla Coil and Lightning Land, Mater examines two photos of flashes of energy. “The erratic and unpredictable energy of this work alludes to the radical transformation that have reconfigured Saudi society since the mid-20th century, first with the discovery of oil, and later with the founding of massive new urban centres.” He hopes that this can help better understand power:
“I am interested in how power makes itself manifest. Often invisible, governing things like the financial markets, it also can appear and transform societies in seismic and unpredictable ways. In my country, this happened with the unexpected discovery of oil. At that moment, the vast expanse of the desert became the site of enormous power.” TJ Demos, a prominent scholar of petroaesthetics, uses this to form a link between environmental activism and anti-colonial struggle, citing examples of people protesting against the destruction of the environment while they also fight back against their own destruction.
The book Entangled Earth by Nabil Ahmed explores the intertwinement between human and nonhuman actors within Bangladesh and links earth actors, like iron and gas, to human actors in the country's anticapitalist struggles.
In The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Rancière defines the relationship between art and politics, and argues that art both reflects and shapes the social order by defining what society decides is sensible. Eco-critical art on the other hand is self critical in nature, and is meant to pick apart commonly practiced behaviors that harm both humankind and the environment.<ref name=":2" />

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