YARAT Contemporary Art Centre

Oscar Murillo: Dis Place
Faig Ahmed: Nə Var Odur
November 11, 2016–January 29, 2017

YARAT Contemporary Art Centre
E119
AZ AZ1003 Baku
Azerbaijan
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–7pm

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YARAT Contemporary Art Space (Baku, Azerbaijan) is pleased to present two major exhibitions—Dis Place, a solo exhibition by Colombian-born artist Oscar Murillo and Nə Var Odur—a solo exhibition of an Azerbaijani Artist, Faig Ahmed. Both exhibitions draw from travels and experiences in Azerbaijan and present radical new bodies of work.

Murillo frequently explores issues of community and migration drawing upon his own cultural heritage and that of others. A core aspect of this show is the artist’s collaboration with a community of skilled workers from a historic town of Sheki in Northern Azerbaijan. Located at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, it was an important post on the ancient Silk Route. Sheki Silk Factory, which produced silk and cotton textiles and employed over 7000 people during the Soviet times, formed the core of the community of workers living in the city. Most of them are currently disenfranchised as the factory operates at a fraction of its former self after attempts of post-Soviet privatization. Numerous journeys to the factory throughout the year have formed the backbone of Murillo’s exhibition at YARAT at the same time referencing a similar socio-economic situation at the sugar-cane factory in his hometown of La Paila in Colombia. Through a meaningful collaboration with the Sheki Silk Factory and the town’s community, these discourses manifest themselves through both the materials he chooses to use and a revival of the factory as a site of production.

Curated by Suad Garayeva-Maleki

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Nə Var Odur is an old Azeri saying emphasizing a sense of imperturbability, an attitude of accepting things how they are and have been for many years in the past. It is a state of mind both fulfilling and reconciling with life how it is.

The seven new produced works in this exhibition draw from research into the social habitat of Azeri people living outside the capital Baku. They explore gender relations and social structures within traditional Azerbaijani communities and play upon symbolic gestures, rituals and objects specific to traditional Azeri communities. The exhibition investigates relations to sexuality and death, addressing social taboos and individual trauma.

Through this show, Ahmed urges towards an understanding of a disappearing cultural practice. Stripped of any kind of melancholy the works register traditions as Eastern Practices taking place on the border between Asia and Europe, between East and West. 

Curated by Bjorn Geldhof

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