These rugs are not on the floor, instead they are on the wall. But that’s not the odd part. It’s the patterns that Faig Ahmed weaves into them that make them stand apart. The Azerbaijan-based artist reconstructs traditional patterns into digital creations, forming optical illusions, transforming domestic props into works of art. Symbolic of his oeuvre was the piece Recycled on a wall outside his booth at the recent India Art Fair. The 150-year-old carpet had an interesting story. Sourced from an old woman in southern Azerbaijan, it was gifted by her grandmother before she eloped to marry against the wishes of her family. “It was a Garabakh carpet, which is another part of Azerbaijan. This lady can’t go there any more, because the territory is occupied by Armenia and there is war at the moment. This story’s impact on me was so huge that I couldn’t destroy this carpet with my own hands. I passed it to an art production company,” says the Baku-based artist. A graduate in sculpture from Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Art, Ahmed made his first carpet when he was still in school. His parents were away and he decided to alter a traditional rug in his room into a different pattern. “I just cut it into pieces and then did not know what to do. When my parents came back from the countryside, they did not scold me, but never kept a rug in my room again,” he says. Years later, the experiment has turned into a living. On the shortlist for 2014 Victoria and Albert Museum Jameel Prize, the 32-year-old has taken his “vandalised” and “reformed” carpets to London, Dubai, the Netherlands, Dubai, and Germany. At each place, they have borrowed from regional traditions. In India, he collaborated with weavers in Delhi to jointly design Out on stretched silk with embroidery in floral patterns. “It was challenging, since India has its own rich tradition of carpet weaving. The patterns back home are different from the more intricate ones here, and during the course of the collaboration the intention was to put the two traditions together,” says Ahmed, who was also part of a group show at Exhibit 320 in May 2014. He intends to return to India again later this year, with a solo at Nature Morte.
