To correspond with the recent release of Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, The powerHouse Arena is pleased to present an exhibition of work by the photographer Ed Kashi. In the form of “film strips,” ranging in sizes of up to 24 inches wide by 168 inches long, this format is a new visual context for examining the impact of oil exploitation in Nigeria.

“I see this format as another way of utilizing the visual language of photography,” Kashi says, “asking the viewer to consider a group of images together in a particular sequence, thereby increasing the authorship of the work and my point of view. I’m quite interested in pushing the boundaries of how still photography is presented and this is just an alternative to the more traditional way of looking at exhibited photography.”

For the exhibit, the images are arranged into six separate series, illustrating the central topics in the Niger Delta which Curse of the Black Gold investigates, including the environment’s degradation, the insurgency against the oil industry, and the human cost. Each grouping of Kashi’s work reveals the ubiquity of oil’s impact since its introduction to the country half a century ago and critiques the network by which the world extracts its natural resources.