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Statement
Leyla Jamil Rzayeva is a multimedia artist and printmaker with diverse administrative knowledge and creativity seen in her work at Kala Art Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Walters Art Museum, and Clubhouse Lithography Workshop. 

Her artwork has been exhibited at Berkeley Art Center, ME in a(ME)rica at Root Division, APAture 2023 at Kearny Street Workshop, the de Young Museum, Skyline College, and 500 Capp Street Spring Invitational. 

Born in Moscow and immigrated from Azerbaijan, Leyla’s research and art examine post-colonial identities in the US with a focus on the Caucasus, West and Central Asia.


We are looking at people 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 your feelings about the scene, making the walls between feeling nostalgia and romanticizing imperialism thin. In this 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, reveal enough to stir the assumptions and pull the viewer right back to reexamine their position. 

(see full statement) 

Indexed Work

  1. Sisters, installation, 2024
  2. Taxi, 2024
  3. Excursion, 2024

  1. Fortress, 2024
  2. Holding Hands, 2024
  3. Tourist, 2024

  1. Shade and Taxi, 2024
  2. Study, 2024
  3. Sisters, installation, 2024

  1. Imagined Lunch, 2022
  2. Dividers, 2023
  3. Smoke and Mirrors, 2023

  1. Ties, 2022
  2. Masha and Symon, 2024
  3. Closer, 2023

  1. Winged Rock, 2023
  2. Sisters, installation, 2024
  3. Sisters, installation, 2024