Artist
Tanja Engelberts
Tanja Engelberts, born in 1987 in Deventer, Netherlands, lives and works in The Hague. She studies how to document landscapes that are no longer visible, often linked to the fossil fuel industry. Immersed in the industrial landscape of the North Sea—sailing with maintenance vessels and engaging with offshore workers—she captures the atmosphere of these sites through films, prints, sound, and text.
She has been an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2021), the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Canada), the Ucross Foundation (USA), and the Örö Residence (Finland).
Decom
Decom is a portrait of an industrial site at the end of the life cycle of oil and gas infrastructure. It is here that offshore platforms—once symbols of energy power and intensive extraction—are brought to be dismantled. Removed from the sea, these monumental structures are gradually cut apart, sorted, recycled, and sometimes repurposed on land. The film stages this transitional space, where the remnants of a dominant industry are reduced to raw materials.
The work is devoid of any visible human presence. Machines fully occupy the frame. This absence reinforces the impression of an automated world, where humans appear only as distant initiators of processes that now exceed them. The site becomes a post-industrial landscape, almost autonomous, in which traces of human activity persist without bodies to embody them.
The film is also marked by its distinctive rhythm. It alternates between slow, almost meditative sequences and moments of sudden violence, when structures are cut or moved. This contrast reflects the life cycle of oil fields themselves: a long and gradual exploitation followed by a brutal and irreversible end. Through a combination of wide, contemplative shots and immersive close-ups, Tanja Engelberts places the viewer at the heart of this process.
With Decom, Engelberts invites reflection on the material consequences of the energy industry. She reveals the hidden side of extraction—not its production, but the disappearance of its infrastructures and the transformations they leave behind.
