The Shortest Distance Between Two Points at Sfeir-Semler Gallery

The Sfeir-Semler Gallery is hosting an exhibition by Rayyane Tabet called “The Shortest Distance Between Two Points”. Tabet will be showing a project he has been working on since 2007, researching The Trans-Arabian Pipe Line and the company that ran it.

The TAPLine Company was established in 1946 as a joint venture between Caltex, Esso, and Mobil. TAPLine was formed to build and operate a 1213 kilometer long, 78 centimeter wide steel tube to transport oil through land from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon, crossing the border of five political entities in a region that is very conscious of its demarcated lines. In 1983, the line could no longer sustain the pressure from layered and adjacent political interests and the company was dissolved.

Today, it sits hidden six feet underground, the objects used to render the company released into a raw form. “The Shortest Distance Between Two Points” uses material from TAPLine as devices to propose an alternative way of traveling the region and understand its development.

The infrastructure rendered abstract through disuse and abandonment, offer a link to the present through the past. The company’s imprint is the record of a rise and a fall, and the arc that binds them. It’s shadow runs parallel to the shifts in the land. Stationary, rulers, tags, logos, slides, lines and the pipe itself become specters through which to address the political, geographic and social transformations in the region since the end of World War II.