Amin Roshan

2012 Oil and Tea

My elder brother used to bring me these National Iranian Oil Company plans from his work and I have applied photographs and old memories to these plans. These plans make me feel nostalgic for when we were children my drawing notebook was made up of waste paper from my father’s workplace; like large prints of employees' salaries, official information or handwritten restaurant menus in different colors of yellow, red and white. The children in our house used these papers for homework and for practicing exercises. A while ago, I found some of these plans and papers, by chance, in our family warehouse and this made me think about running this project.

With the pictures from this series, I want to provide a window into the lives of the people who were producing these plans. Their lives were characterised by continuous gatherings, with endless servings of tea – tea was a constant feature in their lives – all the while thinking about oil and oil plans in one form or another. However, over the years, as oil production in this oil rich land declined, so yesterday’s gatherings became far less frequent.

For these pictures I have used brewed tea and applied crude oil with the silk screen technique.