INVASION WITH A YOUTHFUL EYE

The final phase of the project that has been implemented by the YARAT! Organisation within the framework of the ARTIM programme for supporting young talents has started with the "Invasion. Museum 2014" exhibition. For some years now the programme has been supporting aspiring young artists, designers and musicians. This year the theme of the project is the country's cultural and historical heritage as interpreted by contemporary young artists. Therefore works executed in a variety of genres and pursuing different trends were on display at the exhibition: painting and sculpture, installation, video art, and performance.

Young people's views of the modern world are always interesting. An exhibition like this helps you to understand the intellectual process with which the artists respond to life and their spiritual participation in it. You see, it is important to feel that you are part of society, that it finds you interesting and needs you.

Snippets from the female student artists' conversations accidentally overheard:

The first student: "I love exhibitions like this. They give me a boost in new ideas for a long time to come. Afterwards I wander around for a few days, thinking about what I have seen. I'm seeking to find my own interpretation of every work."

The second student: "That's exactly it. I'm like that as well. That's why I like the conceptual art. Imagine as much as you like, but you will never be able to say that there can't be any more different interpretations. There are! Even if you yourself don't think of any, then one of your friends will."

The third student: "Well, I don't know. I personally find it boring. I like realism much more. And impressionism."

The girls went on talking as they moved away. In the room that they had come out of there was a curious installation by Nadir Eminov. Busts of classics of world literature were placed around the perimeter of the room, including those of Azerbaijani the classics Natavan [1832-1897], Samad Vurgun [1906-1956] and so forth. This is a symbol of the moral, intellectual, emotional, psychological and cultural heritage of the 20th century. And somewhere, almost inside this encirclement,there is the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb. It is immediately clear how fragile the world of man is in the 21st century. And how defenceless he is! Possibly because the values of the past are beginning to be rejected, but new ones have not yet been created. It is as if mankind has become frozen between the past and future, not knowing which path to take. For the moment, no decision has been made. The world is rolling down into the abyss under its own momentum, into the abyss of self-immolation.

Ayxan Xalilov. Video installation. In this room the video installation is onthe theme of choice in art. Surrounded by great art dominated by the authorities, a youth in white sits on a chair.He is bound, as if fettered, by the traditions, ideas and 20th-century forms in art that have become fixed. He desires wide, open spaces, freedoms and independence. He is severing contacts with the ideals of the past in fine arts. It turns out that the path of the artist's quests is like prickly thorns rending his soul apart almost until it bleeds, although the soul is not expressed in physical form. And finally, a pure white wall stands at the back of the main character. This is a prototype of the canvas. You can create something of your very own on it, something new, something original, something that is nothing like all what has gone before this. The author offers the canvas-like wall to everyone who is prepared to make a contribution to it.

Aytan Abdullayeva. "The Book" installation. They are piled up right at the very entrance to the exhibition hall and look like arches, under the entrance into which book-like birds are soaring! Everyonewho goes in, passing through this archway, is as it were undergoing initiation to gain access to something sacred. The culture of the past: the thoughts, feelings, ideas and points of view. This culture has not remained in the backwoods, away from general human interest. And only by going through the ritual of initiation will you be able to go further. For, while man is still living, nothing will be able to start from nothing.

Arif Amirov. The installation "Childhood". Where do our children spend their childhood? Mainly in children's playgrounds and at home with their parents. This is the place where our children usually spend most of their time. And what if you imagine that that is a little model of the world. Then, after analysing the details of the objects filling this world, you ask yourself the question, properly speaking what can we expect of children growingup in these conditions? What kind of world are we giving them and leaving them? A world, deprived of harmony cannot shape a harmonious personality.

Nazrin Musayeva. The installation "Time Links". Two huge discs, inside which the eye pieces of opera glasses are fixed. Their place in the structure is distancing things and bringing them closer. The past can be brought closer and the present distanced. This happens if you stand opposite the construction on one side. But, if you walk round it and stand opposite to where you were, then the contrary is true: the past can be seen at a distance and the present closer. It is an optical illusion, a deceptive impression, something imagined. It is a game with reality in a "simulation". But perhaps it is a method of getting away from reality?

Orxan Qarayev. The installation "Ground meat". Time does not spare anyone or anything. One formation is replaced by another. And it is good if that process occurs naturally, in the process of the development of technologies, for example. Then what is new always finds room for itself alongside the old. They appear to go together quite organically. But what if it happens by means of revolution? Then the old will definitely the thrown out into the backyard of history. Or it will be wiped off the face of the Earth forever. Then there will not be any messages from the past, no attempts to decipher it, to find the hidden message in the signs of the symbols, finding it amidst them, amidst the gamma of colour and so forth. If you take these four mincers for the four sides of the world, then through generalisations it may be thought that the world has sunk into the depths of chaos and self-destruction. This is because those who have no links with the past are doomed to be deprived of a future. And whosoever rejects the cultural heritage of his own free willrisks it being thrown back in its development for decades to come. This is time wasted, like a brake on progress.

Mehriban Samsaddinskaya. Installa-tion "Programme of Hours". The author of this work offers us various types of clocks - grandfather clocks, wall and table clocks. They are all showing different times. In purple, lilac shades time disobediently races ahead, leaving epochs behind, wiping mankind's memory from the clock-face, washing away the culture-related stratum, the accumulated experience and knowledge, removing the reminder that there is a future. As they perish, the material and non-material worlds overflow into the expanse with the inexorability of an irreversible process. This is a warning against spending time thoughtlessly and having an irrational attitude to the passing of time. Kalagai [Azeri silk scarf] like a symbol of great art that is passing away, getting caught in the hands of the clock-face, depend on time. It looks as if it has lost the linear nature of its structure, making threatening gestures that it will supplant it and conceal its tracks. Where will actual time be then?

These are various interpretations of versions, which can easily replace one another, since the conceptual art that the girls discussed at the very beginning of our visit to the exhibition really can be many versions. This is such absorbing training for the mind, capable of developing creative thought and will awaken and stimulate the imagination. And it, in its turn, will create all the prerequisites for another invasion of the young, of the flamboyant, of the daring, to happen as often as possible, an invasion like this into customarily fixed traditional ideas, views and forms, because this is the only way that geniuses are born such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and Salvador Dali.