Once it was believed that contemporary art and tradition were incompatible. At first sight, contemporary art, projecting fundamental changes, seemed to set itself the objective of breaking its links with the entire preceding culture. In fact, however, while putting an end to academic art, which traced its origins back to the Renaissance, contemporary art itself turned to ancient forms and types of traditional art. It is worth recalling the references in the visual heritage of such masters and founders of modern art as Malevich, Kandinsky and Picasso to Russian iconography, medieval miniatures and the archaic art of Sub-Saharan Africa. Breaking their links with historical academic art, these artists discovered in traditional art an unfailing source of inspiration, full of new formal discoveries. Thus, from its very origins, contemporary art has drawn from the ancient source of visual culture and taken energy from it.

At the present stage of his creative quest, Faig Ahmed, a contemporary artist, turns to one of the most ancient practices of Azerbaijani visual art—the carpet. Not only is it an ancient form of applied arts and crafts, but carpet weaving is also renowned for being one of the most conservative arts, with little tolerance for radical innovation.

However, Faig Ahmed decided not simply to make use of the potential of traditional carpet weaving in an attempt to adapt it to contemporary art, as classical artists often did by combining tradition and modernity and thus enriching contemporary art. On the contrary, in his works Faig Ahmed appeals directly to the technologies of traditional carpet-making—a very risky yet curious approach which might generate what could be called actual tradition.

Two general points may be addressed in relation to the exhibition.

The first could be called processuality. The project as a whole demonstrates the complex process of carpet creation and may be perceived as an artistic action. Three exhibition halls reveal three phases of carpet weaving from a conceptual perspective. In one of the halls, we can fix our gaze on enormous piles of fleece—the primitive basis of carpets, their “flesh and blood.” Fleece is an organic material of nature; it is an almost living substance whose spirit feeds the carpet and ensures its eternity. The soundtrack stresses the vividness of the fleece: the buzzing becomes the breath of the primitive substance...

The second phase of carpet weaving involves the production of threads, which are then dyed in various colours using organic, natural colourants. The threads, produced and displayed in a specific manner—as a visual installation—can be seen in the second exhibition hall.

And finally, the long-awaited result—the carpets themselves—is displayed in the third hall. Yet the carpets look fundamentally different from what we are used to seeing in their traditional form; they are presented in an innovative format. Faig Ahmed subjects traditional carpets to deconstruction, changing and reformatting their visual basis and providing them with new possibilities of optical display based on contemporary art techniques, such as Op Art.

The process results in actual tradition—in other words, tradition revived from a centuries-long hibernation.

The second crucial point of the exhibition is the artist’s particular attention to the factor of completeness; he focuses on the objet d’art as a self-sufficient artefact. The key focus of the exhibition, however, is not on processuality, but rather on the artworks themselves: both the two-dimensional works displayed on the walls and the three-dimensional objects — sculptures.

This approach goes hand in hand with a newly emerging trend in world art that proclaims a return to the objet d’art as it is understood in a material sense. Harry Lehmann, a contemporary German philosopher, addresses this trend in his writings. Based on his analysis of the current situation in art, the philosopher comes to the conclusion that postmodernism is being replaced by a global tendency which he calls “reflexive modern.” The key sign of reflexive modern is the return of the objet d’art, after many years of the domination of video, performance, installation and other forms.

If we assume that this theory is correct, then we can affirm that Faig Ahmed’s strategy, focused on the objet d’art, is at the cutting edge of actual tradition in visual art.