GROUP EXHIBITION

Tales from the Caucasus places regional traditions and histories within a contemporary, globalised context,creating connections between past and present. While many of the artists are based in Europe, their worksdraw on stylistic roots from the Caucasus, engaging contemporary perspectives shaped by migration, culturalexchange, and autobiography.

Agil Abdullayev’s practice is an ongoing inquiry into how the queer body archives and performs identity acrossmultiple spaces, both physical and psychological. In a new series of paintings and recent video work Abdullayevexplores the entanglement of queerness and public space in post-Soviet contexts. Their work offers intimateportrayals of private realities, respecting anonymity and foregrounding resistance to preconceived notions ofmasculinity and social restrictions in often conservative environments. Their award-winning three-channelfilm Radicals in Between Trees and Dicks (2024) follows individuals navigating ‘cruising’ culture in Azerbaijanand surrounding countries — societies where homosexuality remains taboo. Abdullayev has visited over thirtycruising locations, such as public parks or discreetly designated private sex spaces, documenting their ownobservations and recording the experiences of others in interviews, conversations, and visual recordings.

Ulviyya Iman focuses her attention on Azerbaijan’s social structures and cultural norms, shifting between self-portraiture and observational viewpoints. Her canvases heighten emotional intensity within mundane settings,as seen in The End (2025), which depicts a meykhana, a millennia-old Sufi tradition of social gatherings whereimprovised verses are performed to percussive rhythms, drawing parallels with rap battles of contemporaryhip hop culture. Iman was moved by a video of the final meykhana of Aydin Khirdalanli, a performer famedfor his skill, and saw that it mirrored the composition of di Vinci’s The Last Supper. In Self Portrait, Red (2025),Iman confronts the viewer with a direct gaze and vivid palette, conveying a scene charged with psychologicaltension.

Ramina Saadatkhan’s painted collages offer a vision of inseparability between nature and human experience.Drawing on Nietzschean ideas of the “creature and creator” within, she depicts animals and foliage asexpressions of inner states rather than external landscapes. Experiment Number 3 (2025) is in dialogue withthe Biblical scene of The Garden of Eden and interprets themes of temptation and betrayal. Together withPomegranate King (2025), both engage mythic imagery and archetypes, staging dynamic tensions between thehuman and the animal, feminine and masculine, order and chaos, creation and destruction.

Primarily working with sound and moving image, Farhad Farzali combines traditional and marginal cultureswith contemporary music and popular aesthetics. His practice is rooted in anthropological research intothe neo-folklore of Azerbaijan and neighbouring regions. Echoactivism I (2025), is a collaborative project withAiganym Mukhamejan (Echo Activism Collective) that comments on the paradox of hyper-connectivity andfragile human connection. The video documents a performance addressing the ecological crisis of the CaspianSea, in which two performers that are positioned on opposite shores call to each other across the water; usingiPhones and Bluetooth speakers as modern shamanic instruments.

Bringing together shared cultural memory, evolving values, and striking generational shifts, Abdullayev,Farzali, Iman, and Saadatkhan each develop distinct visual languages that speak to the complexities of life inand beyond the Caucasus. Through these intertwined perspectives, Tales from the Caucasus explores questionsof place, identity, and belonging in a rapidly changing world.