Faig Ahmed Redfines the Traditional
“I want to do with carpets anything that I can with all the instruments that exist, so no one can even do anything with them in the coming 100 years,” boldly declared Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed in an email, as if penning his personal manifesto.
Recently, his experimental and, at times, sculptural versions of Middle Eastern carpets have been spotted everywhere from the Venice Biennale to Dubai’s financial center. Ahmed reshapes traditional motifs in his hypnotizing, hand-woven works, creating rugs that must be reckoned with rather than walked upon. In some pieces, patterns appear to bubble or melt into oil slicks of color. In others, graffiti-style lettering, cartoon characters, or pixel-like blocks overlap with the typical, ornate flourishes. Ahmed inserts elements of contemporary culture into objects culled from a longstanding tradition.
Many Western readers are familiar with Persian rug knock-offs spun from acrylic threads and perhaps even grew up with them in their homes. These ornate carpets entered the European consciousness as early as the thirteenth century. Renaissance paintings often feature them in the backgrounds of Annunciation scenes and portraits of the Virgin Mary. Commodified and removed from their original context over the centuries, these carpets have been fundamentally stripped of meaning and turned into kitsch objects in Europe and the U.S.
But in Azerbaijan, carpet-making is an age-old craft as well as a source of cultural pride. Steeped in a tradition of weaving that dates back to the fourth millennium BCE, these decorative objects are a ubiquitous feature of Azerbaijani homes to this day. With a variety of regional schools within the nation, Azerbaijani rugs stand out from other Middle Eastern traditions with their angular, geometric designs.
“Taking into consideration this deep influence of tradition, the carpet is still a symbol of home, coziness, family values and hospitality,” commented Ahmed.
In taking this traditional object and redefining it, the artist presents his Middle Eastern and international audiences with an invitation to rethink the ways the past influences the present. Moreover, he encourages us to consider which aspects of tradition are worth holding on to.
Before he began working with carpets, Ahmed said, he thought of their structure as unshakeable. Though carpets may seem mundane and perhaps even trivial, this statement is revelatory with regard to the ways many of us accept the norms with which we have been socialized—whether they pertain to our religious upbringing, the messages that surround us in mass media, or otherwise. When certain customs are passed down through generations or ingrained in us from an early age, they carry with them implicit beliefs and worldviews. Thinking critically about which cultural mores we accept into our lives allows us to utilize history to define the present for ourselves.
“Azerbaijan has lots of interesting and beautiful traditions, but some of them should be left behind like a ballast,” said Ahmed. “Azerbaijani people are very flexible and can easily mix past and present, but there are clashes between different generations. You can never build anything new without breaking the old. There is nothing eternal.”
One’s connection with Ahmed’s work depends on one’s own cultural context. But the artist uses carpets to call the concept of tradition into question instead of prescribing a specific social commentary. By rearranging familiar handicrafts into warped and altered art objects (and conversely, disrupting art world norms with his use of a traditional craft), Ahmed reminds us that even seemingly immutable institutions can be radically altered.
hmed’s process for creating his work is laborious and multifaceted. The artist worked in collage, video, and installation art before his fascination with carpets began during a trip to Iran. After extensive research, he made what he describes as a futile attempt to create his own patterns from scratch. With so many motifs and techniques ingrained into the craft through the ages, this wasn’t a short-term endeavor.
“It turned out that the easiest way of communicating with a carpet was destroying it, or even analyzing it with tools and instruments that have never touched it before,” said Ahmed of his approach.
Today, he hybridizes digital and analog means. The works begin as computer sketches, which he then draws pixel by pixel onto engineering paper. These designs are then sent to a traditional weaving workshop that executes his vision.
In some pieces, carpets appear to come alive in three dimensions, spiking up sharply like heart monitors or swelling into voluminous cylinders that reveal their woolen innards. “Young girls from Azerbaijani villages who weave my carpets think wider than their grandmothers did when they were weaving their carpets because they have passed a border in their minds,” Ahmed asserted. “And the desire of freedom is the most sincere feeling of all.”
The artist is a shaman. And shamans have always brought something strange into the society, something people don’t need and yet something that changes them dramatically.”
Ahmed’s works cross-pollinate the worlds of art and craft, modernity and tradition, especially considering the humble village workshops where his carpets originate and the sleek, cosmopolitan galleries where they are ultimately displayed. While the workers’ minds may be broadened as they weave these rugs, his urban viewers might, in turn, be reminded of the ways timeworn traditions are still vital aspects of people’s lives, even in the digital age. In the United States especially, cultural items are often utilized outside of their original contexts (the ubiquity of Native American headdresses at music festivals comes to mind) and the concept of a venerated custom has become alien to many in the context of consumer culture.
“The artist is a shaman. And shamans have always brought something strange into the society, something people don’t need and yet something that changes them dramatically,” Ahmed said of his purpose. He views himself foremost as an irreverent innovator. Though, visually, his work is grounded in patterns, he is determined not to fall into routine. “Before I was only thinking about doing something with the carpet, [but] now I have begun to listen to the music of these ancient symbols,” he continued. “You think I have fallen into a trap of tradition myself? No way! I can deconstruct and destroy better than anything else, so I’ll find my way out.”*
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