I interview artist Sanaz Sohrabi about her work with the British Petroleum archive and the world’s oldest obsession. 

Montez Press Radio
Airing Sept 25, 2020

Produced with Discrit’s programming series. 

Panning

Pan is the chillest Greek dude. While everyone else is in the temple, Pan’s holding it down in the woods, hosting epic parties, making sure everyone’s goblet is full, and getting laid. He’s enjoying the pre-industrial night air, cracking jokes, and jamming on his flute. But sometimes, all his friends go home. Sometimes, Pan wakes up in the morning, alone in the forest – confused, hungover, depressed – and he cries out. “Panic.”

One panics when they feel lost and confused in nature.

Published in Avery Shorts Season 3, 2019

Full Text

Slideshow presented at Datatopia, Berlin, Germany, summer 2018.

20/20
Newburgh, NY

Moving through a house like hiking up a mountain. Through the musty undergrowth to the sun shining bright symbols above, designated danger marked on a butterfly’s wing.

In Newburgh, a city which has faced economic austerity and abandonment, many of the historic facades now bear a red X - a graphic indication of structural danger and visual reminder of poverty.

20/20 renders Newburgh's ubiquitous red X into natural phenomena.

Light box with vinyl transparency, 2019.

Exhibited in “Terrain Biennial”, Newburgh NY

Photography by Michael Vahrenwald

NoHuntingPurple14319
New York, NY

In many US states, a particular shade of purple paint is a legal territorial marker. It is called No Hunting Purple, available by the gallon.

In 2018 in New York City, we take a purple-marked fence from the countryside and install it on the roof of a bank, claiming $14,319 worth of the building’s air rights. We tell no one. It remains today.

2018 - ongoing

Together with Nathaniel De Large

Photography by Michael Vahrenwald