(Trans-Arabian Pipeline) Steel Rings (Rayyane Tabet)

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The fall landscaping at the Highline in New York covers up the idea of abandoned historical remains expressed in the form of simple steel rings. This is what can be done with minimalist/conceptualist sculpture. Historical memory comes into and out of view. As described by the curators of the Wanderlust exhibition, it is a contribution, “Rayyane Tabet’s (b. 1983, Lebanon) work explores paradoxes in the built environment and its history. For Wanderlust, Tabet installs a new iteration of Steel Rings, a sculpture that replicates forty kilometers of the defunct Trans-Arabian Pipeline, a 753-mile-long American venture that transported oil by land from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon through Jordan, Syria, and the Golan Heights between 1950 and 1983. Due to sociopolitical transformations of the region, the company was dissolved and the pipeline abandoned. Today, it is the only physical object that crosses the borders of five countries in a region whose population is highly conscious of its demarcated boundaries.

About zjb

Zachary Braiterman is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. His specialization is modern Jewish thought and philosophical aesthetics. http://religion.syr.edu
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