MATRIARCHY Painting

b. 1987, Ganja, Azerbaijan He lives and works in Baku Vusal Rahim is a multidisciplinary, multimedia artist and performer. Trained as a theater designer, he studied in the department of Theatre and Decorative Design at the Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts in the workshop of People’s Artist Kamil Najafzadeh from 2007 to 2011. He chiefly works in painting, graphic art, decorative theatre and stage design, video art, photography and sculpture, often involved in more than one medium simultaneously, with numerous different techniques. In his art work, Vusal expresses a unique perspective on figurative images, using the human form as his inspiration. Through this lens, he analyzes social expectations and gender roles, illuminating things which are often buried deep within the cultural memory. Through the embodied form, both individually and together as families, he confronts major life questions about culture, identity, gender and societal values. He illuminates the friction between spoken and unspoken taboos, and through his work invites viewers to examine their own agency within their culture. Key features of his style are the deconstruction of human images and their unconventional reconstruction using a large and imaginative palette. Viewers of his works are challenged to consider how we take the human form for granted and how changes in form and colour can introduce vastly different impressions and suggestions about people as individuals and in social groups. His education and continued involvement in theatrical costume and stage design can be seen in his work through the application of vivid colour and deliberate, confident lines, that give his paintings a starkly dramatic, theatrical look.