Events

As part of the Fly to Baku. Art Weekend. Sense the Future NOW project, the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum presents the exhibition Land of Carpets.

The exhibition brings together the legacy of Latif Karimov, founder of the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, prominent scholar and People’s Artist of Azerbaijan; the work of multidisciplinary artist Medina; and the creative practice of carpet specialist Yashar Malfouzi.

At the heart of the exhibition are relief silk carpets woven for the first time based on two designs by Latif Karimov, marking the 120th anniversary of his birth. A contemporary interpretation of Karimov’s rich artistic legacy is further explored through works by the winners of the digital art competition jointly organised by the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum and the HUG.art platform.

Among the highlights are newly woven carpets based on Medina’s works Spring, A Street in Baku, Autumn and Still Life. Here, painting is translated into the language of carpet weaving, allowing colour, line and form to acquire new dimensions through the possibilities of textile art.

The exhibition also features a relief carpet inspired by the 19th-century Gushlu (With Birds) carpet from Baku, preserved in the collection of the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, alongside two relief carpets created by carpet specialist Yashar Malfouzi.

Conceptually, Land of Carpets is grounded in the idea that tradition lives not only through preservation, but also through interpretation and transformation. The exhibition brings inherited knowledge into dialogue with contemporary artistic practice, demonstrating how the language of carpet can continue to evolve while remaining rooted in its cultural heritage.

Daria Kravchuk Head of Art & Strategic Partnerships at .ART, Curator, Museologist How does tradition remain alive across generations, materials, and technologies?

Land of Carpet brings together the work of Latif Karimov, contemporary artist Medina, artist-weaver Yashar Malfouzi, and a group of digital artists to explore the carpet as a living artistic territory, one shaped by history and craftsmanship, yet continuously transformed through new interpretations, materials, and technologies.

For Latif Karimov, founder of the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, artist, carpet designer, scholar, and one of the founding figures of modern carpet studies, the carpet represented an entire cultural landscape. Through decades of research, artistic practice, and design, he documented and systematised centuries of Azerbaijani carpet traditions, preserving their extraordinary vocabulary of ornament, symbolism, composition, and craftsmanship. His work made it possible for this knowledge to be studied and passed between generations, while establishing the carpet as a complex artistic language in its own right.

At the centre of Land of Carpet is the idea that such a tradition does not remain alive by standing still. It continues through interpretation, transformation, and the encounter between inherited knowledge and individual artistic practice.

Multidisciplinary artist Medina approaches the carpet from the perspective of contemporary painting. Beginning with works on canvas, she transforms her compositions into handwoven carpets, allowing them to acquire an entirely new material presence. Every colour, line, rhythm, and gesture must be reconsidered through the possibilities of weaving and interpreted by the hands of master artisans.

The exhibition extends this dialogue through the work of Tabriz-born artist-weaver Yashar Malfouzi, whose practice is rooted in several generations of carpet making. For Land of Carpet, Malfouzi enters into a direct conversation with the collection of the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, taking the historical nineteenth-century Quşlu carpet as the point of departure for a newly woven work. Presented together, the historical carpet and its contemporary interpretation reveal how an object from a museum collection can become the beginning of another creative process, understood through the knowledge of a maker, and given a new life through weaving.

These different encounters with the carpet unfold throughout the exhibition. Newly woven carpets based on Latif Karimov’s original sketches are presented alongside the drawings from which they originated, allowing visitors to see how a design moves from paper into material form. Medina’s paintings appear together with their woven counterparts, tracing a journey from canvas to textile and from the individual gesture of the artist to the collaborative process of weaving. Malfouzi’s reinterpretation of the museum’s historical Quşlu carpet creates another relationship between past and present, placing an existing collection object beside a work produced through a contemporary reading of it.

A further chapter of Land of Carpet carries this conversation into the digital realm. Through the international open call REMIX A LEGEND: Reimagine the Legacy of Latif Karimov, contemporary digital artists are invited to engage with Karimov’s visual legacy and create new works inspired by his designs. Selected works will be presented on screen within the exhibition, extending the carpet beyond its physical form and placing Karimov’s historical vocabulary in dialogue with contemporary digital culture.

Here, technology opens another territory for experimentation. Ornament can become movement; a static composition can acquire duration; patterns can be fragmented, animated, layered, or reconstructed. Motifs developed through drawing and weaving can migrate into a dynamic digital space, demonstrating how the visual principles of the carpet can continue to generate new forms far beyond the traditional textile surface.

Across the exhibition, the carpet emerges as a place of continuous exchange: between artist and artisan, drawing and material, historical object and contemporary interpretation, hand and technology. Each transformation alters what came before it. Colours shift, surfaces acquire texture, painted gestures become woven knots, historical compositions are reinterpreted by contemporary master artisans, and traditional motifs begin to move through digital space.