All That is Solid Melts into Air

Swiss-American artist Mark Boulos works with documentary film to investigate the relationship between ideas, ideology and materiality.

In the video installation All That is Solid Melts into Air (2008), the corporate colonisation of Nigerian oil resources frames a clash of cultures and beliefs. Two factions indirectly battle over the control of petroleum on two opposite screens. In London, traders speculate on futures while in the Nigerian delta, guerrillas wage war against the corporations that mine and exploit their land. The film focuses on the Ijaw people and the war god Egbisu, who inspires their struggle against foreign companies and their secessionist movement for independence. Through this poetic exploration, contrasted by the religious beliefs of the guerrillas, Boulos investigates the fetishism of the city bankers and reveals the abstract and metaphysical nature of their beliefs.

All That is Solid Melts into Air was presented on Cockatoo Island for the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008).