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Shiva Ahmadi

 

Title: Oil Barrel #18 and Oil Barrel #19

Medium: Enamel paint and Swarovski Crystal on steel oil drums

Year Created: 2011

Ahmadi is fascinated with oil politics and the major role it plays in the world’s economic and political balance. She thinks that it is clear that competition for petroleum motivates a huge number of international conflicts as well as an equal number of relationships between nations that otherwise would not find cultural commonality.

Painting on oil barrels helps Ahmadi to work out and to identify the political and economic complexity and instability that exist in the Middle East today. Look carefully at the images painted on the barrels and you will find not only beautiful patterns and designs deriving from Middle Eastern arts emphasized with reflective crystal beads, but also symbols of violence and conflict such as shields, faceless figures, arrows and fighting animals. Much of this iconography is influenced by Persian and Indian miniature painting.

The shiny beads give an impression of the aesthetics of a kind of superficial life-style that derives from oil-wealth, as well as ideas of glory and dominance, while the bleeding bullet wounds in the body of the drums points to pretty obvious connections between the practice of violence and the desire for oil.