Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Westminster
'City, London, 2008'
A single, large-scale (122 cm x 250 cm) composite photograph that evokes the financial crisis. A standalone artwork in its own right, the image also forms part of Tabrizian’s ongoing project to rework the documentary genre in order to raise questions about the relationship between individuals and their environment. In 'City, London, 2008', JP Morgan employees are captured part way through what was arguably the worst year for the financial sector since the 1930s. It is a moment of intense uncertainty: will the system ever recover? But rather than present a group portrait of City bankers, Tabrizian aims to give artistic expression to the more abstract notion of global capitalism in crisis.
Please see portfolio for full documentation of research dimensions.
Tabrizian’s research aimed to capture, within the constraints of a single image, a sense of the global financial crisis as it unfolded. In contrast to Edgar Martins or Polly Braden, who addressed the crisis by depicting abandoned US homes or bankers in the streets, Tabrizian was inspired by Zizek’s philosophical investigation of the recurrent crises of global capitalism. She asks whether it is possible to make a visual representation – snapshot – of an abstract idea. This work shares territory with the fictional tableaux of Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson, but in Tabrizian’s work, real people enact or re-enact their own lives, a strategy originally inspired by Iranian New Wave cinema. The rigour of Tabrizian’s approach is evident in the construction of her mise en scène. Every detail counts. The bankers, for example, are presented in the depersonalised middle distance, which lends the picture an allegorical quality. The men’s individuality is subsumed by the corporate entity, and the distance between them suggests they are interchangeable, expendable, pawns in a game. Part of Tabrizian’s continuing project to rework the documentary genre, 'City, London, 2008' is both a tableau vivant and a documentary slice of life. Shot at the London headquarters of JP Morgan, the picture involved many weeks of preparation and test shoots with 30 extras, to design the composition and arrange the lighting. The image is composed of four photographs, shot originally on a 5 x 4 camera, scanned and digitally combined, then output onto 10 x 8 negative and printed on C type photographic paper. The image was used as the catalogue cover image for 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, an exhibition of 140 artists at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, and was subsequently acquired for the museum’s collection.
