Oil Factor

For many years, the oil-rich territories on the Western coast of the Caspian Sea were considered a tasty morsel of land for immediate neighbors and great powers.
Although oil was first extracted commercially in Azerbaijan in the end of the 19th century it was not until late 20th century that the country gained, together with its independence, was able to have access to its own resources.

It used to be working pump on other side of Bayil hills. This pump was disassembled in 2020

In this work from the Oil Factor series, Oil Pump 3779 — once a tirelessly working mechanical robot — now stands still as a silent exhibit in the city’s national park, telling the story of urban transformation on the Caspian coast. It reflects on how the city expands across the shoreline in direct correlation with the depletion of oil reserves. Former extraction zones, once harsh industrial sites, are gradually reimagined: the first line becomes part of the growing seaside boulevard, the second, a stretch of residences overlooking the sea. And so it continues, decade after decade — the city pushing outward as the depths run dry.

At the sunset of the oil era, a solitary pumpjack continues its steady cycle, bringing to a close an age that reshaped the modern world. In the distance, power lines stretch across the landscape, harbingers of a new energy reality. Between the departing and the emerging future, this stationary mechanical robot becomes a monument to a transitional moment, when the energy of the past still drives the world, while electric power is already transforming the horizon, and the untamed energy of the future still lingers in the air...