Spectres of the Subterranean (Part I): Rhymes and Songs for the Oil Minister(2021-ongoing) by artist Sanaz Sohrabi unpacks OPEC’s utopic project of unification through music and philatelia, mapping maps the ways in which the visual cultures of oil were tasked to navigate the politics of nation-building on the one hand and to build transnational solidarity on the other. The Iran-Iraq war (both founding members of OPEC) started on September 22, 1980; marking an unofficial closure to the legacies of the oil-centered political alliance of OPEC along with their ideological ambivalences and contradictions. This date also eerily coincides with the publication of a series of unified postal stamps branded as “Progress Through Solidarity” and a music vinyl produced by Petroleos de Venezuela, titled “Rhymes and Songs for OPEC,” speaking to the polarizing political culture of different OPEC members at the time. Released less than two weeks before Iraq's invasion of Iran, “Rhymes and Songs for OPEC” can be identified both as a document attesting to the solidarity-building power of oil and a monument to its failed promises and missed opportunities.

Sanaz Sohrabi (1988, Iran) is a researcher of visual culture and artist-filmmaker. Her medium of work is both essay film and installations, aiming to explore the changing relationship between still and moving images. Her images stand at the centre of historical relations and archival temporalities, making her work engage with the politics of photography and film technologies, serving as archives of public and subject positioning.