Exhibition project Contemporary Art in Carpets to the 5th International Symposium on Azerbaijani Carpet
The Azerbaijan Carpet Museum timed the exhibition project Contemporary Art in Carpets to the 5th International Symposium on Azerbaijani Carpet, which will be held in Baku in October 2017. The audience will be presented five works of four famous young artists, Faig Ahmed, Farid Rasulov, CHINGIZ, and Butunay Hagverdiyev. All of them over the last decade successfully represented modern Azerbaijani art abroad, in particular, they took part in the famous Venice Biennale.
For the exhibition within the framework of the symposium, each of them put forward their view on the carpet art, its traditions and continuation in modernity. Comprehension of the symbolism of the antiquity masters' works, the modern transformation of ornaments, habitual forms and even the extension of the carpet's utilitarian value ‒ all were reflected in their works. But everyone interpreted this in their own way, continuing the characteristic and recognizable line of their own creativity.
“Flowing” carpets have long become the general line of Faig Ahmed’s creativity. One of these carpets will be presented to the viewer ‒ its ornament organically flows into dark streams, reminiscent of oil flows. Another work of the artist is a composition representing a universal recycling symbol (three paper arrows closed in a Mobius strip as a sign of infinity) created in carpet material. The message of this work is obvious: the Azerbaijani carpet’s system of images and ornaments is the basis for contemporary authors’ further creative research, and this serves as a pledge to preserve its traditions.
CHINGIZ presents a carpet woven specially for the symposium, which seems to be an illustration of the idea of processing expressed in the work of Faig Ahmed. His carpet is breathtakingly modern and amazes with strict simplicity, where more than a laconic form is entirely subordinated to a multi-faceted design. The carpet's central field is covered with the same black zoomorphic (bird-like) elements, and only one of them, in the middle, has the same shape in white color. This is a symbolic image of the “white crow”. The idea of this work is to show a certain point in time and space that can change everything: the birth of the universe, the emergence of a creative idea, and the influence of creative thought, capable of stirring up the routine of the environment... Here can be many interpretations, but all of them are somehow connected with novelty and unusualness. And in this sense, this work reflects the very essence of the traditional carpet’s creative transformation in the works of contemporary authors.
Farid Rasulov created Carpet Room for the exhibition. Here, everything ‒ from walls and furniture to the smallest details of the interior ‒ is a carpeted surface. Thus, the viewer can feel inside a carpet as a kind of single, eternal, universal work and appreciate its enormous influence on the traditional Azerbaijani interior and domestic art in general. As a model for his installation, Farid Rasulov took ornaments and composition of the Karabakh carpet Chelebi.
Butunay Hagverdiyev also decided to admit the viewer “inside” a carpet but approached the solution of this problem in a radically different way. Its installation consists of large wooden modules painted with acrylic and shaped like traditional ornaments of the Azerbaijani carpet. They are mobile and can be put together in various ways, creating, as a result, a single composition that can be clearly seen from above (this composition will be shown in a special hall of the museum with a glass ceiling for viewing from the top floor). From the side view, the whole installation looks like a bright, elegant labyrinth, as if inviting the viewer to open its secrets.
