‘If you want to change the world, start with yourself’

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The artist acts as a mouthpiece: he is an experimenter, she questions, he uses his hands to think, her gift is to make you ask not just why, but why not. In choosing our collaborations we seek those whose work makes us consider new realties. The idea has to be authentic, the message must seep into your conscious like ink spreading on paper, and set alight your curiosity. 

The work of artist Faig Ahmed has been in our imagination for two years now. At first a random, serendipitous discovery, our paths now merge as we present our fourth Edition coat - Deluge.

A native of Azerbaijan, Faig is a mystic in the most earnest sense, rooted in his core is a fascination with perception, ancient languages and codes, and a prescient understanding that the past is a powerful tool with which we can try to understand our present state. Faig works with traditional rug techniques, a hallowed craft in Azerbaijan undertaken only by the women of that nation. No men enter in that secretive world of woven stories, it is forbidden. In to this tradition Faig weaves optical illusions, pixelation, pulsing geometry and sometimes negative space - works of art with deliberate gaps and spaces or sections that fade to nothing, as if the colour has instantaneously evaporated.

Deluge is inspired by Faig’s ‘Flood Series’. The flow of darkness seems to gluttonously ooze down, threatening to overcome the traditional carpet motif. Is it the mark of a great undoing, or does the flood of dark represent a great washing away, the removal of all intricacies, all complications? The word play with a blank canvas and a black canvas was too close for us to ignore. In designing the Deluge coat we wanted to encourage this idea further. In a busy world we wanted to distill some stillness.

The front of the piece is armour like, with a deep black, luscious neoprene. This adds structure, and a false front of sorts. For, as you turn, the deluge emerges, from the nape of the neck it starts to unfold. Keeping to black for the front construction and the inner binding exaggerates the disappearance of the rug motif. We witness the final moments of complete oblivion. The familiar sight of regal red and intricate patterning of the rug is made unfamiliar; it’s an age old tradition but the conceit is decidedly of this century.

Oh, and it’s just so exceptionally cool.

This is a new experiment for Faig, and our first into the world of rug making. A curious coupling of ideas. We strive only to bring you work of value and impact. This is a coat for the doers, the bold, the fearless. This is Deluge.

See it here

 

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