Azernews.Az

By Laman Ismayilova

The Azerbaijan Carpet Museum’s new Carpets and Legends project was launched with an exhibition ‘Chinese New Year’ on February 14.

The exhibition was co-organized with the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China to the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Prominent public and art figures, representatives of diplomatic missions attended the event.

Director of the museum, chairman of the ICOM National Committee Azerbaijan Shirin Melikova, Chinese Ambassador to Azerbaijan Wei Jinghua, the head of the Cultural Institutions and Folk Art Department at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism Fikret Babayev stressed that both Azerbaijan and China have an ancient history, art and traditions. The exposition serves as a cultural bridge linking two nations.

According to the Chinese Lunar calendar, the Year of the Dog began in February 2018. Therefore, the project linked the museum exhibits with the image of this year’s symbol. A few never-seen-before carpets from the museum fund are also presented at the exhibition.

Dog images are one of the common elements of world art. Their content in various epochs and in the art of different peoples varies from totem to a way of life.

In the ancient Chinese Art, this is a wide range of images of celestial guardian ‒ mythical dog-lion (Foo Dog) in carpet art, painting and sculpture, as well as modern clay dog ‒ the traditional fishery of Huaiyang.

The dog images are frequent on Azerbaijani carpets. Several dozen of the late 19th ‒ early 20th-centuries Shirvan, Karabakh, and Gazakh carpets in the compositions and ornaments of which the dog images are somehow involved will be put on display as part of the project.

The exposition consists of two parts: the first exhibits carpets where images of dogs are shown realistically, while in the other they are depicted symbolically, in an encrypted form.

The dog images appear in a stylized and even fragmented form on such Azerbaijani carpets as Maraza, Gazakh and Shirvan. On such carpets “dog” patterns can carry a deep and even totemic meaning stretching back to earliest times.

The exhibition will run until February 28.

---

Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz