Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Rome’s Montoro 12 Contemporary Art jointly with YAY! Contemporary Art Gallery presents the first solo exhibition of Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed in Italy from March 12 to April 24.

The event displays a new series of Ahmed’s ‘carpet works’ in which he took traditional Azerbaijani carpet designs as a starting point to transform them into powerful contemporary works of art.

Known in Italy for his participation in the Venice Biennale in 2007 and 2013, the artist has exhibited his work in many major international art capitals including New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Dubai, Moscow and Hong Kong, to only name a few.

The artist has also held exhibitions in famous centers like Venice Biennale, Moscow National Center of Contemporary Art and Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau in Dresden.

In 2007 Faig Ahmed started a series of works that deconstruct the traditional patterns and designs of hand-woven Middle Eastern carpets - the symbol of his local tradition - transforming them into a striking visual feat.

Looking at the work Oiling as an example, every attendee can see a traditional Azerbaijani carpet, which, half-way down, mutates into a cascade of seemingly liquid color, as if the carpet’s threads just metamorphosed into streams of multi-colored paint. A compelling visual illusion: like the top half, the lower part is still a wool carpet made with natural colors.

Earlier in October 2013, Caroline Busta noted in her art forum review of Faig Ahmed’s works, "There is a postcolonial tendency to deny non-western cultural producers the agency to employ irony and empty signifiers and to misread codes, but Ahmed has utilized these operations to great effect."

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz