Aidan Salakhova

Property of the artist

Aidan Salakhova has been exposed to the art world since childhood due to her father, a much celebrated painter Tair Salakhov. Equally acknowledged as her father, Aidan is an Academician at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts. She belongs to the new generation of prominent Post-Soviet artists who try to establish a new identity for themselves and the surroundings they dwell in. Salakhova’s oeuvre serves as a meeting point for occidental and oriental thought and art practices. She deals with binary oppositions in her art and the frequent juxtaposition of black and white acts as preliminary hint. Salakhova’s oeuvre concentrates on the prevailing debate about the role of women in 21^stcentury and the ever-growing desire to revise the value system and the imposed gender roles. Central to her oeuvre is the motif of a veiled woman. However, her art is not limited to the Eastern women dealing with the hijab dilemma. Salakhova borrows Islamic attributes and addresses the whole contemporary female population. The veil becomes a signifier of female self-censorship; all women are disguised to some extent regardless of their religious beliefs or the socio-political tendencies of their surroundings.  According to the artist, ‘there is a discrepancy between the inner aspirations of women and the stereotypes imposed by the society’[1]. Salakhova does not allow for the usual objectification of women either into subjects of desire or voyeurism. Objecting to male hegemony, she is a successor of the great early modernist female artists.

Since 2010, Salakhova started employing Carrara marble statues in collaboration with Studio Nicoli. Carrara marble is a traditional Western sculpture material, its practice dating back to Hellenistic art. Marble allows for the most diverse renderings, of which Salakhova takes full advantage; with this heavy stone she depicts the lightness of drapery as the present lot, Kidnapping, demonstrates. Cloth plays a crucial role in traditional Western sculpture. Ever since the Renaissance, it has been positioned to accentuate the nudity of perfectly carved Gods and Goddesses. Drapery is essential to Aidan’s sculpture too; however, she inverts the typical arrangement and fabric becomes the focus rather than a complimentary detail; and hence points at the concealed body. Rather than demeaning, being behind the veil becomes empowering. Not to fall prey to the Western tendency of orientalist exoticism and its fixation on fanatic terrorism, Salakhova does not portray the cloth in black, but in pristine white. The black stone hidden in the folds of the drapery in Kidnapping is an evident reference to the ritual of Hajj. The Black stone is the most sacred reliquary in Islam and it is a great honour if the pilgrims touch the Al-Hajar al-Aswad (The Black Stone). Therefore, in a broader context, the black stone in the present lot personifies something greatly cherished and venerated; everyone has their own black stone we would want to protect in marble.

The title of the lot evokes the custom of kidnapping still practiced across remote parts of Asia today; the motives have always been diverse. Nonetheless, it was common practice to kidnap a bride in order to escape disapproving parents. The sculpture is imbued with such twisted romanticism. The uncanny resemblance of the sculpture to the vaginal form, a distinctive motif of Salakhova’s art, adds to sensuality of the artwork suggesting the kidnapping of chastity. There is a fusion of tenderness, purity, sacredness and chastity, as well as passion and lust. It is a subtly provocative sculpture open to a variety of interpretations, as are many of Salakhova’s works.

[1]From the artist’s interview with MIR TV Channel, 14 April 2013.