Steel Rings (2013 – ongoing) and Letterhead (1950-2013)

Rayyane TabetSteel Rings (2013 – ongoing) and Letterhead (1950-2013), installation and frame of documents

Section: Out of Control Room

Both works from the series: The Shortest Distance Between Two Points

The Trans-Arabian Pipeline (TAPLine) was an American venture with a length of 1213 km that transported oil overland from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon by way of Jordan, Syria and the Golan Heights from 1950 to 1983. Due to socio-political 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 political entities in a region that is very conscious of its lines of demarcation. Steel Rings (2013-ongoing) is a sculpture that replicates this object in ten-centimetre segments, manufactured in the same diameter and thickness as the original pipeline, each engraved with the distance from the pipe’s source and its corresponding geographical coordinates.
Letterhead (1950-2013) is a series of framed papers that were collected at the abandoned headquarters of the TAPLine in Beirut. The silent, withering documents are placed side by side to form an abstract timeline that follows the rise and fall of the venture.
Both works are on view at Palazzo Ajutamicristo.