Investigating Petro-Modernity: Between the Alternative Writing of Modernism and the Hypothesis of a Post-Oil Visual History

Morad Montazami

This research project offers a panorama of studies on 20th-century painters, sculptors, architects, filmmakers and poets, from Baghdad to Algiers, via Cairo, who are singular voices and inventors of forms in petro-modernity. Regardless of their nationality, whether they are poets (such as George Henein, Jean Senac, Abdul Kader El Janabi) or painters (such as Behjat Sadr, Abdel Hedi El Gazzar, Shakir Hassan Al Said, all three important artists who spent several years in Rome), it is true that they all share a certain penchant for a cosmogonic universe in which the forms at play tend to be assimilated to natural, meteorological, stellar or even supernatural forces. Oil may be just one of these cosmogonic forces, although it remains paradigmatic (linked as much to the earth as a natural deposit as to politics through expropriation and, of course, coups d’état or movements to nationalize oil), no doubt also because of its ability to link cinema, literature and the visual arts – all fields that this project wishes to explore. This petro-modernity is also expressed through cultural infrastructures and museum projects, and even specific festivals (Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, TMOCA, Al Wasiti Festival, Baghdad, Louvre Abu Dhabi, etc.) which will be included in the historical analysis.
The second strand of this research consists of a contemporary investigation, through a panorama of photographers, video artists and digital practitioners concerned with ecological issues, post-industrial society, the survival of ecosystems and resistance to uncontrolled urbanism, war planning, and military-industrial colonization. Through their anchorage and movements, they also embody these new cosmogonic frontiers and routes, which go beyond national and colonial borders to form an atlas for a post-oil visual history (the route of sustainable agriculture, the route of alternative habitats, the route of former oil sites that have been converted or dismantled, etc.). An atlas of images, but also scientific, activist and thematic essays to accompany them will be part of an exhibition project, including Arab, African and Asian artists from all over the world.