
Mouthful
Mouthful
36 min., 2018
Shirin Sabahi
Artist Noriyuki Haraguchi returns to the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art to restore his sculpture Matter and Mind (Oil Pool) — a rectangular steel tub filled with used engine oil. The artwork is permanently installed at the museum’s atrium since its inauguration in 1977. Since the installation of the oil pool, the museum visitors and perhaps the staff had thrown coins and other pocketable objects into it. Curiosity about what lies under the pool’s black reflective surface eventually led to organizing Haraguchi’s visit and the pool’s restoration forty years on in 2017. Mouthful starts from a rumor about the cause of the artwork’s deterioration and follows the labor of restoration, the poolside conversations and the dredged-up keepsake, treasuring the material quality of the sculpture as a container of private and institutional histories.