26 Jun - 29 Jun 14
START Art Fair: Contemporary Azerbaijani Art
Saatchi Gallery, London
Presenting work by Farhad Farzaliyev (b. 1989) and Nazrin Mammadova (b. 1989), YAY Gallery brings to the fore the first generation of artists to mature since Azerbaijan’s independence in 1991. Reflecting the rapid cultural and aesthetic changes Azerbaijan has undergone over the last few decades, Yay Gallery’s stand will shed light on a new and burgeoning art scene.
Farhad Farzaliyev’s (b. 1989) Granny’s Vocabulary series, 2014, considers nostalgia for the Soviet era, combining rudimentary Soviet textiles with neon slogans from his grandparents’ generation. Using Cyrillic script, which was replaced by a Turkish alphabet after independence in 1991, his work immediately speaks of the pre-independence era of Soviet rule and the tumultuous history of Azerbaijani script, which has changed officially three times in the last eighty years.
Nazrin Mammadova’s (b. 1989) Alti Agach series, 2014, uses majestic photography of the Caucasus Mountains, which dominate the geography of the region. Interlacing their contours with plexi-glass sections of saturated colour, Mammadova shows how the cultural symbolism of the Caucasian mountains is becoming intertwined with the rapidly developing consumer culture of the region, symbolised by the artifice of the lurid, mass-produced materials.