Morad Montazami
Black gold or curse: investigating petro-modernities and the hypothesis of a post-oil visual culture
5 December 2024
The recent paradigm of petro-modernity takes oil as a political catalyst through expropriation, coups d’état or movements to nationalise oil, in the 20th c., beside an intermedia tool for its ability to link architecture, cinema, literature and art history; as well as a specific critical stream in museum history. How can we hence account for the emergence of petro-cultures and infrastructures, in and out mainstream cultural industry and representations of the 20th c. ? How did humanity shift from the golden age of oil economy and growth to our collapsing era of environmental curse and ecosystems’ resilience ?
Morad Montazami is an art historian, a publisher and a curator. After serving at Tate Modern (London) between 2014-2019 as curator « Middle East and North Africa », he developed the publishing and curatorial platform Zamân Books & Curating to explore Arab, African and Asian modernism. He published numerous essays and curated among other projects Bagdad Mon Amour, Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, 2018; Casablanca Art School, Tate St-Ives/Sharjah Art Foundation/Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2023-2024; Arab Presences. Modern Art and Decolonization. Paris 1908-1988, Musée d’art moderne, Paris, 2024.