Focus Gallery: Mark Boulos
April 22 through Sunday, July 31, 2011
Mark Boulos
Born Boston, Massachusetts, 1975. Lives London and Amsterdam
All That is Solid Melts into Air, 2008
Two-channel video installation
Running Time: ca. 15 minutes
Collection Miami Art Museum, gift of Ana Carolina & Luiz Guilherme Affonso, Steven and Kathleen Guttman, Patricia and William Kleh, Monique and Alex Halberstein, Carole and Ira Hall and Aymee and Peter Zubizarreta, commemorating the 2010 MAM International Committee visit to Berlin, Germany.
All That Is Solid Melts into Air is a two-channel video installation with images screened on opposite walls of a room. In the projected images the exploitation of Nigerian oil resources creates the occasion for a contrast of cultures and beliefs.
One screen features images shot in the Niger delta, showing impoverished villagers and militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which has taken up arms against both the foreign oil corporations that extract and export oil from their territory and a government that does not distribute the proceeds it receives from the oil companies to its people. The oil industry has polluted the water, destroying the livelihood of the delta's fishing-based communities, and the people remain poor. The guerillas are shown preparing themselves for battle and asking for blessings from Egbisu, their god of justice and war, who they believe protects them from bullets. On the opposite screen are traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest commodities exchange in the world, who speculate on oil and other commodity futures. The material commodities themselves, as well as the conditions in which they are produced, are completely alien to this financial nerve center, which focuses solely on imagined future value.
Through its composition and editing, Boulos' video subtly underscores the similarities as well as the differences between these two groups at opposite ends of the oil "pipeline." Members of each group appear in costume, perform ritualized actions, and whip themselves into frenzies: one in the name of justice, the other in the name of profit. Through this juxtaposition, Boulos highlights the metaphysical abstraction that underlies each group's perspective on a material entity: oil. The title of the work comes from a quote by Karl Marx: "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."
* Photo Credit: Mark Boulos, All That Is Solid Melts into Air, 2008. Two-channel video installation. Running time: ca. 15 minutes. Collection Miami Art Museum, gift of Ana Carolina & Luiz Guilherme Affonso, Steven and Kathleen Guttman, Patricia and William Kleh, Monique and Alex Halberstein, Carole and Ira Hall and Aymee and Peter Zubizarreta, commemorating the 2010 MAM International Committee visit to Berlin, Germany.
Online Visitors' Gallery
- Mark Boulos discusses All That Is Solid Melts into Air during the opening reception for the video's MAM premier
- View images from the artist talk, opening reception
Exhibition Organization & Support
Focus Gallery: Mark Boulos is organized by Miami Art Museum and curated by Peter Boswell, assistant director for programs. It is supported by donations to MAM's Annual Exhibition Fund.
