Sanaz Sohrabi (b.1988, Tehran) is a researcher of visual culture, artist-filmmaker, and an Assistant Professor in the department of Communication and Media Studies at Concordia University, Montréal. Sohrabi works with essay film and installation as her means of research to explore the shifting and migratory paths between still and moving images, situating a singular image in a continuum of historical relations and archival temporalities. 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 colonial British controlled oil operations in Iran, conducting a visual ethnography of resource extraction in relation to the media infrastructures of BP.
Sohrabi’s ongoing project explores the contested historical role that visual representations of oil have played in shaping postcolonial sovereignty and resource nationalism in Iran and the Global South more broadly. Her current project is conceived as a trilogy of essay films, the first episode of which “One Image, Two Acts,” has been internationally screened and exhibited since November 2020 and has been widely acclaimed. The second episode of this trilogy of films is titled “Scenes of Extraction” and was commissioned by VOX Centre de l'image contemporaine in Montréal and premiered at Berlinale Forum Expanded in February 2023. Her first feature documentary and the final episode of this trilogy is titled “An Incomplete Calendar.” The film is centered around the postcolonial image politics of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its establishment in Baghdad in 1960 as the first oil alliance ever formed from the Global South to challenge the economic dominance of the seven major Western oil companies known as the “Seven Sisters.” “An Incomplete Calendar” had its World Premiere at Cinéma du Réel in March 2026.
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. She holds a PhD from the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University, supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture at Concordia University, Montréal. Sohrabi is also 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.
