Faig Ahmed: Textiles of Consciousness

Faig Ahmed’s work is a contemporary take on the textile traditions of his native Azerbaijan. Beginning from the understanding that textiles join families and societies through their patterned stories, Ahmed’s practice experiments with the role of carpets in Azerbaijani social and cultural history. The pixelated aesthetics that emerge in his large-scale works confound our cognitive and sensory expectations of craft-based textiles. Textiles of Consciousness moves beyond the meeting ground for historical practices and contemporary digital aesthetics inherent in Faig’s work. We invite you to feel—not just to think about—how the artist blurs the boundaries between sensation and perception, and by extension of collective consciousness, through the textures and visual glitches, drips, and fluffs found in his textiles.