FOREWORD
Cultural dialogue has, down the ages, always been an important element of a state’s foreign policy; the acceptance of other peoples and their cultures is essential to political and social rapprochement. International cultural events providea platform for the presentation of the state’s cultural achievements and particularities, as well as for cultural dialogue. Such events are also a crucial venue for cultural reflection and response to challenges arising in ever changing political, economic and social contexts.
ARTISTS
The three artists represented in the Azerbaijan Pavilion this year are from different generations and apply different means of expression and technique. However, their works selected for display at the Biennale touch, in one way or another, upon situations intertwining reality with a fantasy in which an individual must overcome alienation and achieve a sense of belonging within the observed/imagined space.
VUSALA AGHARAZIYEVA
The artist’s project, Pink Planet, imagines a science fiction scenario, referencing illustrations that appeared in works of futuristic literature in the 1950s and 1960s. Interpreted through a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, and digital installations, the journeys that have shaped her background are a constant in the artist’s narration ...
RASHAD ALAKBAROV
Rashad Alakbarov exhibits one large-scale work in the pavilion – the installation I Am Here. Within the faceless white walls of a modern labyrinthine city, the artist recreates the oppressive atmosphere of the cramped and predetermined trajectories of our movement in living space, movement set by the rhythm of the structures into which we are forced to fit ...
IRINA ELDAROVA
Irina Eldarova asserts that women are initially foreigners. Getting married, moving from their parents’ home, sometimes even from their country. This series tells of a non-realist, fictitious meeting and love between two heroes mythologized in the mass media. East and West, of the 1960s and 1970s – a typical male worker from the offshore oil fields in the Caspian Sea and the Hollywood idol Marilyn Monroe ...