L13009

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Lot 31
  • 31

Aidan Salakhova

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Description

  • Aidan Salakhova
  • Untitled (From Destination Series)
  • signed on the reverse
  • Carrara marble
  • 91.2 by 63 by 33cm.; 35 7/8 by 24 3/4 by 13in.
  • Executed in 2012, this work is unique.

Provenance

Collection of the Artist

Catalogue Note

Artist, curator, gallerist and teacher Aidan Salakhova is based in Moscow.  Trained at the Surikov Institute of Art in Moscow, she is the daughter of Azerbaijani artist Tair Salakhov.  Her work reflects a dual Russian-Azeri identity, and she draws upon Western and Oriental art historical practices in her work.  In 2007 she was elected an Academician of the Russian Academy of Art.  Her art practice is wide ranging, from painting and drawing, to installation and film.  Salakhova first explored the medium of sculpture in 2010, when she started work on a series titled Destination.  Beautifully carved in Carrara marble, using a combination of white and black stone, the large-scale sculptures in this series, such as the offered work, explore various aspects of female identity.

Salakhova challenges the viewer to engage with her sculptures eye to eye, playfully responding to the objectification of the female nude in art history.  She creates new 21st century prototypes which are startling for their power and dignity.  Her subjects include sexual organs - abstracted male and female genitalia - a woman holding her hands in prayer, or holding a sacred book.  The teardrop, carved in marble, is a key motif in this series, and as in the offered work it represents tenderness, pain, vulnerability and release of emotion.  The offered work was created in 2012 and depicts a veiled form combining the two typical elements of praying hands and the teardrop.  Salakhova’s inspiration comes from Classical sculpture, in which the unclothed human body was idealized and venerated.  Here, using the same rich Italian stone, she creates a new dialogue with the human body, startlingly at odds with the older tradition, yet also beautiful.

Destination followed closely a series of drawings and watercolours the artist executed some years previously, called Persian Miniatures in which she explored female sexuality in the erotic and the oriental, using traditional models.  Her art does not aim to shock, but to express tenderness and love, yet her premise is not easily accepted.  In 2011, two of her sculptures from the Destination series were banned from exhibition in the Azerbaijani pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale.  Works from the series were also exhibited at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2012 in Fascinan and Tremendum.  Salakhova’s use of the veil in her art can be read on various levels, both as social convention in Islamic culture, and as an object which conceals the self and which one - the artist herself - can hide behind.