A Drop of Sky runs in Baku

/By AzerNews/

By Amina Nazarli

Commissioned by YARAT Contemporary Art Space, A Drop of Sky is the 3rd Public Art Festival which runs in Baku from June 13 to October 5, 2015.

Coinciding with the first European Games, and benefiting from the broad international audience who will be in Baku, over this period, the Public Art Festival will give both residents and visitors to Baku the chance to see a range of events held within the frame of the Festival. Participating artists include Wafaa Bilal, Ergin Cavushoglu, Farhad Farzaliyev and Nazrin Mammadova. Artworks will be displayed at various locations throughout the city as well as through a web based technological component that explores the virtual public art platform. The festival will be accompanied by an education programme including a film club, artist talks and a two week workshop, AA Baku school: a collaboration with Architecture Association in London led by architects and AA tutors Omid Kamvari and Kasper Ax.

Curated by Sara Raza, Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for the Middle East and North Africa and YARAT Head of Education, the festival investigates how contemporary artists and audiences perceive the rapidly developing natural, scientific and technological changes currently occurring in Baku and beyond. Taking inspiration from the poetry and thinking of Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov, the festival explores ideas pertaining to poetry, philosophy, astronomy, logic and illogic. Referencing the city’s rich history as a major trade port and its recent urban gentrification, A Drop of Sky responds to ideas concerning nostalgia for both the past and the future and the point at which the ancient and the modern intersect.

Green Grass in the Sky Turned Blue (2015) is a billboard that presents a poetic tongue twister that toys with language and lyricism. By reversing the commonality between the ground and the sky the artist intentionally attempts to confuse viewers both logically and linguistically and provides a humorous commentary on everyday commercialism and semiotics. By re-appropriating the language of commercial advertising through the repetitive of the use of the same consonants in multiple neon words Farzaliyev seeks to probe a deeper understanding of what the public consume on a daily basis and how this processed through text, language and alliteration.

Farhad Farzaliyev, born in 1989 in Baku, Azerbaijan completed an MFA with distinction at the Azerbaijan State Architecture and Construction University in Baku (2012). He works predominantly in the medium of installations, but also paintings, graphics, photography and sound. Farzaliyev has been a member of Artists Union of Azerbaijan since 2011 and a member of YAY Gallery and YARAT Contemporary Art Centre since 2013. He has participated in a large number of group exhibitions around the world including the 16^th edition of the Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2014). His works are held in the collection of the MoMA, Baku. Farhad Farzaliyev currently lives and works in Baku.