An exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery
Nasrin
Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi, ‘Seep’, 2013. Installation with video.
Co-commissioned by MACBA and Chisenhale Gallery and presented in partnership
with Delfina Foundation. Courtesy of the artists and RA Magazine.
In 2011, the artists Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi began a series of works that juxtapose
two 20th century archives in the UK and Iran. One produced by British
Petroleum (BP, then known as the Anglo Iranian Oil Company) documents
the company's operations in Iran beginning in 1908 and ending with the
nationalisation of the oil industry in 1951. The other is the collection
of modern Western art acquired by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
during the late 1970s and withdrawn from public display for twenty
years following the Islamic revolution in 1979. The artists' approach to
these archives considers their suspension, through discontinuation (in
the case of the oil company) or removal (in the case of the museum).
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. Titled Persian Story, the film was
produced in Technicolour and was an idealised account of Anglo Iranian's
activities, in line with the narrative recounted in the company's
archive, but its production coincided with political disputes around oil
and the closure of the refinery, and these factors inevitably
encroached on the film's plot. Tabatabai and Afrassiabi's video
dramatises a letter from the archive in which the director, who was
commissioned to make the film, complains about the 'unfilmability' of
his subject matter.
Also included in the installation is a scale model of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art that shows only the passages leading to the basement where the collection of Western art is stored, omitting the representational spaces of the galleries. Although some works are occasionally exhibited, since its withdrawal in 1979 the collection has acquired a sense of non-presence. Tabatabai and Afrassiabi interpret this innate withdrawal as the means by which the collection is able to enact its contemporaneity as an 'Iranian' collection, and thus, conversely, re-enter history. This approach presupposes a subtractive notion of archiving and archival representation, which underlies the historiography proposed in this installation.
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.
Nasrin
Tabaiabi and Babak Afrassaibai,‘Seep’, 2013.
Photo by Andy Keate. Courtesy Chisenhale Gallery.
Nasrin
Tabaiabi and Babak Afrassaibai,‘Seep’, 2013.
Photo by Andy Keate. Courtesy Chisenhale Gallery.
Nasrin
Tabaiabi and Babak Afrassaibai,‘Seep’, 2013.
Photo by Andy Keate. Courtesy Chisenhale Gallery.
Tabatabai and Afrassiabi have
collaborated as Pages since 2004, producing joint projects and
publishing a bilingual magazine – also called Pages – in Farsi
and English. Their projects and the magazine's editorial approach are
closely linked, both described by the artists as 'attempts in
articulating the indecisive space between art and its historical
condition'. A forthcoming issue of Pages, titled 'Seep', will be published in Summer 2013.
Tabatabai and Afrassiabi live in Rotterdam and work in the Netherlands and Iran.
The exhibition runs until 12 May 2013.
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