Agil Abdullayev

Agil Abdullayev is a cross-disciplinary artist, manifesting his works through video, conceptual essays, community-based projects, and critical discussions in Baku.
The semi-biographical practice of Agil, examines queer identity and how socio-political domination has shaped it in Azerbaijan and other south caucasian countries. He manifests through paintings, video, performance, and digital tools such as AR and VR. Main components of his practice, are understanding queer history through nonhuman subjectivities and reading the queer body as an archive. As in his films, he refers to escapism and utopia with futuristic aesthetics, works aim to address queer anxieties. He regards his childhood experiences as an archive of personal history, transhistorical memory, and space of hyper-possibility where representations of queer narratives can be disrupted, re-articulated, and reinvented.
The course of Abdullayev’s works merge through examination of Azerbaijani queer identity representations and its relationship to the history, culture, queer thoughts, and radical South Caucasian traditions, often interwoven in explorations into his alter-egos and post-modern narratives. He frequently references and incorporates theoretical models in interdisciplinary research-based practice concerning imposed gender roles and embedded social class inequalities.In 2020, Agil founded a critical discussions platform, "Çağdaşçılar" as a response to the censorship, lack of contemporary art media and art criticism, as well as to support emerging and marginalized artists and cultural workers.

Education: 2015-18: BA Fine Art in Nottingham Trent University, UK

Exhibited in Blindspot Gallery in HK (2022), Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and Goethe Institute in Tbilisi (2021), MOMA Tbilisi and South London Gallery (2019),  LUX London and Liverpool Biennale (2018).

Date of residence: 08. 11. 2022 – 29. 11. 2022

http://www.agilabdullayev.info/