Sanaz Sohrabi (b. Tehran) is an artist, filmmaker, and essayist whose work considers visual traces, acts of viewership and their reciprocal dis/reappearances to investigate the impermanence and malleability of archival records and historical narratives. Since 2017, Sohrabi has done extensive archival research at the British Petroleum archives to engage with the history of photography and film practices of the British controlled oil operations in Iran, conducting a visual ethnography of resource extraction in relation to the media infrastructures of BP. Sohrabi’s works have been shown widely in solo and group exhibitions and festivals including: Berlinale Forum Expanded, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Iran Cinéma Vérité Festival (Winner of International Mid-length), IndieLisboa (Silvestre Section Best Short Film), Valdivia International Film Festival Chile (Special Jury Mention), Mimesis Documentary Film Festival (Best Documentary Short), Ann Arbor Film Festival (Jury Award), Montréal International Documentary Film Festival (RIDM), Sheffield Doc/Fest, Kasseler Dokfest, Videonale, VideoEX Zurich, FIDBA Argentina, among others. Sohrabi’s recent solo and group exhibitions and commissions include Ljubljana Biennale (2023), SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, VOX Centre de l'image contemporaine, Montréal, Centre Clark, and Carpintarias de São Lázaro, Lisbon. Sohrabi has been supported by fellowships and artist residency awards such as Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, RAW Académie Senegal, SOMA Summer School Ciudad de México, Est-Nord-Est résidence d’artistes, and Vermont Studio Center. Sohrabi received her BFA from University of Tehran College of Fine Arts and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a merit scholarship. Sohrabi is a member of the research group “Oil Cultures from the Middle East and Latin America (OCMELA),” with whom she has published a conversation with Murtaza Vali, titled “Petromobilities in the Global South,” released by Museumsforlaget in Norway in March 2022. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University, Montréal supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC).
Image: Notes on Seeing Double (Still), 2018, HD video with sound, 11:10 minutes
(updated 2023)
BOLT Residency
