Circling and Returning

Emin Aliev's Circling and Returning is Tbilisi born Azerbaijani artists first solo exhibition. Show presents Emin’s paintings as a total installation - room is full of cut wallpapers, creating a maze-forest-like structure within which the portraits are discovered. The works were created in late 2023 and early 2024 during and after life-changing and extremely hard period that artist experienced - health and financial conditions had him drop out of art school and he had to undergo major operation and recovering period that followed, boosted his creativity and resulted into the new style that he developed. Revisiting past of being a forced, silent observer of events like - funerals, weddings with child brides, hand-burying found dead kittens, overcoming major disease, re-discovering mother's immense role and strength, accepting his own vulnerability and diving into the comfort of family care, showed up in his art - the images and materials - leftover from home renovation wallpapers and paint he used to create portraits that fiercely stare into our eyes, and through that into the future.