Originally, the Japanese word manga was used to refer to “whimsical drawings” or picture books. The Petroleum Manga, a “picture book” about oil, is inspired by Hokusai’s thirteen volume set of manga. It depicts everything from trees to demons, squirrels to shingles. Each Petroleum Manga banner represents items organized by a specific petrochemical: PET, PVC, HDPE, PMMA, polystyrene, polyurethane, ammonia, nylon, paraffin and more. These heroic banner-size drawings on Tyvek divide up the gallery space into a labrynthine maze with images of oil-derived products such as garbage bags, water guns, rubber chickens, taxidermy forms, food containers, credit cards, medical supplies, and flip flops.

From the start, the project had been imagined as a book inspired by the original multi-volume Hokusai Manga. The Petroleum Manga, a collection of Zurkow’s drawings, in collaboration with 39 writers including poets, scientists,and theorists, was published by Punctum Books in 2014.

In 2017, Zurkow created a video presentation, with novelist Ruth Ozeki and poet Maureen McLane reading their contributions, as part of the online conference, The Lives and Afterlives of Plastics (PERC, University of New Zealand).