Aida Mahmudova's solo exhibtion Internal Peace in Switzerland

Aida Mahmudova: Internal Peace

Barbarian Art Gallery, Zurich

Exclusive Preview: 7 June 2013 / 6.00 – 9.00 pm (by invitation only) 

Opening: 8 June 2013 / 6.00 – 9.00 pm

The Barbarian Art Gallery and curator Sandra Nedvetskaia are proud to present a solo show by the Azerbaijani artist Aida Mahmudova, Internal Peace. The artist will be exhibited her impressive narrative work for the first time in Switzerland. The works are directly inspired by Azerbaijani history, in relation to the artist’s personal experience and identity, illustrating her considerations in the fields of memory and nostalgia. 

Aida’s Mahmudova’s artwork delves into the emotive facets of ‘longing’ – specifically, the longing for the memory of a place, rather than for the place itself. The artist simultaneously meditates on how memory is tied to the debris of the past. Her paintings and other works present history as a collection of mementos, which appear fragmented and partial, and are accessible only through the mediation of personal perceptions and emotional responses. By focusing on an individual perspective within a larger, historical narration, the compositions redress how history is perceived and memory evolves. The situations Mahmudova depicts are retrieved scenes, eyewitnesses of places and situations, which have undergone a drastic change. Through her work the artist invites the viewers to participate in the experience of remembering.

In the words of Aida Mahmudova:

My art is a constant and continued investigation of my memory, as it informs my identity. The touchstone of this search and the main source of my inspiration are the forgotten, untouched, and undeveloped locations in Azerbaijan. Our physical world is shifting at a pace so rapid that our memories are frequently blurred, and our ‘remembered’ past is often forgotten or altered by our subconscious. This confuses our identity. These unmodernised locales function as a ‘missing link’. They are a fulcrum that connects the actual past with the remembered past. They are the fabric of my identity – the fiction and the reality, the memory and the present moment, the subconscious and the conscious. Physically experiencing the concrete reality of these sites allows me to re-experience and revisit the places of my past. These encounters help me to recapture the past within the present moment. The tangible relics of Azerbaijan’s past are timeless and transient, universal and specific, and they are the fabric I use to give material form to the intangible memories that inform my present identity and my art.

Aida’s paintings are composed of muted hues. The depicted scenes are shrouded in a hazy mist, which combines real and reminescent sites from old Baku and the Absheron Peninsula. The accumulations are built from fragments of half-remembered moments of the past era. Through her installations the artist attempts to capture what cannot be completely recalled. She presents a visual and experimential meditation on the spatial and temporal labyrinth of time and captures the essence of a ‘diasphora of memory’. This retrospection is locally based in Aida’s native Azerbaijan, nonetheless it reveals further recollections related with the artist’s experience in foreign lands. The result is the expression of a sense of longing for a memory that has evolved and been layered over time. In an era of rampant technological and urban development, as well as mass globalisation and migration, Mahmudova aims to illustrate how nostalgia can no longer refer to a specific geographical location or to a specific context and how it embraces reminescent sensations, sensual perceptions, smells and sounds, which appear like the debris of a past life.

Aida Mahmudova (born 1982, Baku) graduated in Fine Art from the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. She works with different media, including painting, photography and installation. Aida is also founded Yarat Contemporary Art Space in Baku, a non-profit organisation, which aims to support and develop contemporary Azerbaijani art nationally and abroad. Mahmudovas’s artwork has been shown in important exhibitions in Europe, including in the MAXXI Museum in Rome, the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow and at Philips de Pury & Company in London.

Alessandra Ruggieri De Micheli, Barbarian Art Gallery

Barbarian Art Gallery, Limmatstrasse 275 CH-8005, Zurich