Work
Statement
Artist Statement
In my paintings people are commuting, shopping, sightseeing, and posing for a photograph, their respective roles emphasized by the observer. Hypersensitive to the time and place, the architecture and the light reflect the viewer’s feelings about the scene, making the walls between feeling nostalgia and romanticizing imperialism thin. In my work, I use digitized slides and photographs my father took in Central Asia in the early 90’s. I reinterpret these images to create a shift from the vernacular into poetic.
As a woman who grew up in an extended family with the practice of Muslim traditions, I hold the constant pressure of grief and the desire for understanding. There is an urgency to build recognition and make relational artwork to stop the erasure and the loss of life and dignity. I was born in Moscow and immigrated from Azerbaijan, experiencing multiple pressures of colonial and dogmatic policies including the suppression languages, expression, and speech. My academic and artistic practice serves to offer that lived experience in ideas and form.
Each work begins with a source photograph. I zoom in and make choices about the position of people, the level of detail, the clothing and the objects in people’s hands: grocery bags, scarves, umbrellas, cameras. The tags on the buildings, vehicles, bicycles, and open doors become the expression of the tenderness of the mundane to see beyond judgment.
The paintings and textiles act together to connect the archives with the perceived and the interpreted memories. In the installations, paintings are paired with spatial projects, seen in the blue textile Sisters at Skyline College, part of Homebound, an exhibition by nine Bay Area artists about the complexities and embodied definition of "home" as a metaphor and physical reality.
Reflecting on the words by Suzani Samarqndi, 12th century Persian poet, inscribed on the mihrab of the mosque in Derbent, Dagestan “I have brought four things, O Lord (of Kings), which are not in your treasure, you are not, I have brought needs, excuses, and sins.” Persian lyric poetry in general incorporates and welcomes the pre-Islamic past suggesting a perspective that there is not an absolute view. The implication is that there is not one sole Truth applicable at all times to all people; that other ways of being can be considered to be equally valid. Pushing back against Orientalist fascinations with people and places, my paintings reveal enough to stir the assumptions and pull the viewer right back to reexamine their position.
Leyla Rzayeva
11/19/2024