Icy & Sot: Saman and Sasan Oskouei’s public art practice

Icy & Sot is the earlier working name of brothers Saman and Sasan Oskouei, who also present their work as Oskouei Studio. Born in Tabriz, Iran, in 1985 and 1991 respectively, they moved to Brooklyn in 2012. The studio biography connects their paintings, sculptures, interventions and moving-image work through social and environmental concerns.

From stencils to spatial work

The brothers began making street art in Tabriz during the 2000s, drawing on skateboarding culture and using stencils to communicate within an environment that restricted expression. Speed and discretion shaped their early methods. Their subsequent work increasingly used wood, steel and other materials for interventions and sculpture. Their interest in nature and change expands the practice beyond the stencil imagery associated with the Icy & Sot name.

Objects that carry an argument

A New America, made in 2017 and presented in Times Square in 2019, is a clear example of how their materials do conceptual work. The sculpture forms an American flag from steel bars and fencing. Times Square Arts explains the connection to physical barriers encountered by migrants, while the brothers describe the open silhouette and visible sky as carrying a more hopeful possibility. The object’s meaning therefore depends on the tension between a familiar national image, restrictive materials and the surrounding public space.

The work was presented with SPRING/BREAK Art Show and curated by Zahra Sherzad. Its setting in a highly recognizable New York location matters to its history: it brought questions about access and the American dream into a place through which large numbers of people pass. Those circumstances should remain attached to the work when it is discussed through photographs or later documentation.

Collective projects and continuity

The brothers also participated in the 2022 Eyes on Iran public art project at FDR Four Freedoms State Park. Collaborating artist Hank Willis Thomas’s documentation records their Bricks of a Revolution alongside work by other artists in support of the Woman, Life, Freedom campaign. That project shows the collective dimension of a practice that operates in public settings as well as through individual objects.

For collectors and returning readers, both names are relevant to following the same artistic partnership. An early stencil, a sculptural intervention and a photograph of a public installation occupy different positions in its history. The useful starting point is the original project, medium and setting, with exhibition documentation providing context for how the work was encountered.