Leyla
Jamil Rzayeva

Leyla Jamil Rzayeva is a multimedia artist who engages with topics of girlhood and ethnicity in the US to understand how someone feels and shapes everyday life, and create a shift from the vernacular into poetic.

Leyla’s creative and professional practice can be seen at Kala Art Institute, influenced by her work at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland Institute College of Art, Walters Art Museum, and Clubhouse Lithography Workshop.

Her work 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.

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.

(see full statement)

Indexed Work (left to right)

Memories by the Roll, 2021
Push , 2025
Dividers, 2023

Instant Home, 2022
Rose Water, 2021
Sisters, installation, 2024

Sisters, installation, 2024
Wishing Tree, 2024
Taxi, 2024

Excursion, 2024
Fortress, 2024
Holding Hands, 2024

Tourist, 2024
Shade and Taxi, 2024
Study, 2024

Masha and Symon, 2024
Sisters, installation, 2024
Sisters, detail, 2024

Imagined Lunch, 2022
Dividers, 2023
Smoke and Mirrors, 2023

Ties, 2022
Closer, 2023
Winged Rock, 2023

Cut-Offs, 2021
Sight, 2024-2025