Yarat Center to host Iranian artist’s exhibition
By Nigar Orujova
Yarat Contemporary Art Organization will mark opening of Yarat Contemporary Art Center in Baku with an exhibition of Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat on March 24.
The focus of the exhibition titled ‘The Home of My Eyes’ is a major new commission, produced following the artist’s time in Azerbaijan. The exhibition also includes two of Neshat’s earlier works: seminal video installations called Soliloquy (1999) and Passage (2001). The event is curated by Dina Nasser Khadivi.
Shirin Neshat’s works explore the complexities of cultural identity, gender and power to express a vision that embraces Persian traditions and contemporary concepts of individuality, the organizer said.
Shirin Neshat, an Iranian-born artist, is widely acclaimed for her powerful video installations and photographs. Neshat’s works frequently refer to social, cultural and religious codes of societies and the dynamics of certain oppositions, creating stark visual contrasts through motifs such as light and dark, black and white and male and female.
In her recent photographic works, Neshat has put the focus on the portrait as a prism to reveal the cultural dynamics and personal histories of her subjects, exploring the narratives that can be ‘read’ in an individual.
This new commission, The Home of My Eyes (2015), builds on Neshat’s growing interest in portraiture.
During her time spent in Azerbaijan in 2014, Neshat photographed over 50 individuals who came from communities across the country, of ages ranging from two to eighty years old.
While making the photographs, Neshat asked the participants a series of questions regarding their cultural identity and their concept of home. The resulting responses are written in calligraphy that overlays the portraits. The assembled images make up a monumental installation which fills two entire walls of one of the 11 meter-high exhibition galleries of YARAT Contemporary Art Centre – a converted Soviet-era naval building.
“I consider the new series of images as a portrait of a country that has for so long been a crossroads for many different ethnicities, religions, and languages. This series combines 55 portraits of men and women from different generations to create a tapestry of human faces which pays tribute to the rich cultural history of Azerbaijan and its diversity,” Shirin Neshat explains.
Moreover, the center will also hold an exhibition from Yarat’s permanent collection, with works by artists from the Caucasus, Central Asia and neighboring countries alongside works by international artists whose work has a resonance with Azerbaijan.
The collection itself has been built over the past three years and will continue to grow in part through special commissions for exhibitions at Yarat Contemporary Art Space curated by Suad Garayeva.
Yarat Contemporary Art Center is the first permanent space for the not-for-profit organization Yarat, which has commissioned over 80 projects since it was created in 2011 by Founder and Creative Director Aida Mahmudova and a group of artists.
The centre is a dedicated hub for contemporary art and art education in the region.
Education is at the core of YARAT’s activities and a study centre, with a library and auditorium, will house YARAT’s comprehensive education program featuring talks, screenings and workshops for diverse audiences from student artists to families.
The free exhibitions will be available at the center until June 23.
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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar
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