{"id":724,"date":"2015-03-17T07:07:02","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T07:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/halisiad.com\/?p=724"},"modified":"2015-03-17T07:07:02","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T07:07:02","slug":"artist-faig-ahmed-creates-physical-distortions-into-traditional-carpets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/artist-faig-ahmed-creates-physical-distortions-into-traditional-carpets.html","title":{"rendered":"Artist Faig Ahmed Creates Physical Distortions Into Traditional Carpets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Montoro12 Contemporary Art is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Italy of Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed (b. 1982, Baku). The artist will show a new series of his \u201ccarpet works\u201d,\u00a0in which he takes 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 (2007 and 2013), the artist has exhibited his work in all the major international art capitals – New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Dubai, Moscow, and Hong Kong, to name just a few.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"icoshdsd\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2007 Faig Ahmed started a series of works that deconstruct the traditional patterns and designs of the hand-woven Middle Eastern carpet – the<\/em> symbol of his local tradition – transforming it into a striking visual feat. Looking at \u201cOiling\u201d for example, we see a traditional Azerbaijani carpet, which, halfway down, mutates into a cascade of seemingly liquid color \u2013 as if the carpet\u2019s threads had metamorphosed into streams of multicolor paint. A compelling visual illusion:\u00a0 like the top half, the lower part is still a wool carpet made with natural colors.<\/p>\n

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\"distortions-into-traditional-azerbaijani-carpets-faig-ahmed-06-677x1016\"<\/a>Faig Ahmed\u2019s working method is conceptual:\u00a0 he designs the wall carpets in digital form on the computer and then enlarges them into \u201ccartoons\u201d the size of the finished works. \u00a0Like with traditional tapestries, these life-size paper drawings are then used by local craftspeople hand weaving the carpets on traditional looms. In some ways Ahmed\u2019s working method recalls the production of Alighiero Boetti\u2019s tapestries, which were designed by the artist, but hand-sewn by craftspeople in Afghanistan and Pakistan.\u00a0 As if to capture the rapid evolution and development of his country, Azerbaijan, Ahmed translates a centuries old tradition into contemporary digital forms and designs. In \u201cInvert\u201d for example, we get a sense of the \u201cinside out, back in front\u201d:\u00a0a part of the carpet is shown in its traditional colors, while the rest seems to be the much lighter colored \u201cback\u201d or reverse.<\/p>\n

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\"nandnewe\"<\/a>Many of Ahmed\u2019s \u201ccarpet works\u201d can be described as trompe l\u2019oeils, depicting an illusion of three-dimensionality on a flat surface. \u201cJust Emptiness\u201d recalls a sculptural or architectural trompe l\u2019oeil, such as Borromini\u2019s masterpiece of perspective optical illusion in the courtyard of the historical Palazzo Spada, just a few minutes from Montoro12 Contemporary Art. \u00a0While Borromini\u2019s optical illusion is created by ever shrinking columns, in Ahmed\u2019s \u201cJust Emptiness\u201d a square carpet frame diminishes into a succession of ever smaller and darker frames to an almost black center of great visual depth \u2013 however, the perspective illusion is threaded into a flat carpet hanging on the wall. It is a tongue in cheek allusion to numerous modern works of art depicting \u201cnothingness\u201d \u2013 a frame made of traditional carpet fabric encloses more frames, but no image, \u201cJust Emptiness\u201d.<\/p>\n

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As Caroline Busta notes in her artforum<\/em> review (October 2013) of Faig Ahmed\u2019s works:\u00a0 \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Born in Azerbaijan in 1982, Faig Ahmed lives and works in Baku. Specializing in sculpture, he graduated from the Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Art in 2004 and has since worked in a great variety of media, including painting, video and installations. He has been shortlisted for the Jameel Prize at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2013 and has exhibited his work in important venues around the world:\u00a0 The National Center of Contemporary Art in Moscow, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnheim, Netherlands, the Azerbaijan Cultural Center in Paris, the Islamic Art Festival in Sharjah, UAE, the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau in Dresden, Germany, the Louise Blouin Foundation in London and many others.<\/p>\n

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Faig Ahmed \/ Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit<\/h1>\n

Until 24 April 2015 @ Montoro12 Contemporary Art, Via di Montoro 12, 00186 Rome, Italy<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montoro12 Contemporary Art is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Italy of Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed (b. 1982, Baku). The artist will show a new series of his \u201ccarpet works\u201d,\u00a0in which he takes […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[50,58],"tags":[169],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actual","category-featured","tag-artist-faig-ahmed-creates-physical-distortions-into-traditional-carpets"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/distortions-into-traditional-azerbaijani-carpets-faig-ahmed-01-677x458.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halisiad.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}