ARTIM: “THE CITY OF THE SUN” GROUP EXHIBITION

YARAT Contemporary Art Space is proud to present “The City of the Sun” – a group exhibition featuring works by young artists Erkin Alakbarli, Mehrin Alili, Ramina Bocharova, Rasul Guliyev, Shalala Salamzade, and Ismail Safarali at ARTIM Project Space.

The exhibition is dedicated to the 10^th Anniversary of YARAT Contemporary Art Space.

Group exhibition “The City of the Sun” brings together video-art works and sculptures by a group of young artists exploring the concept of hope from their points of view.

The exhibition title “The City of the Sun” is inspired by the book of the same name by the Italian philosopher Tomasso Campanella. The utopian work depicts the Genoese seaman who sails with Columbus and lands on an island where people live in harmony, regardless of their gender, social status, religion, and other factors.

The show unravels the narratives of people who are left in between hope for a better life and ambiguous conflicts. The exhibition puts forward the relation between hope and mobility, considering that human movements have always had social and cultural relevance to history. Various reasons drive humankind to move from one place to another, despite leaving all their memories and a sense of belonging to a particular location behind. The fluid state of the geographical borders affected the lives of the world’s population and led to such states as homelessness, displacement, and also everlasting longing for the past and hopeful future. Even during the Age of Discovery, Columbus, with the hope to explore sea passage to the Indian Ocean, made voyages only to lead him to a new continent, which later became a battlefield for nations over natural resources, new lands, and, subsequently, the colonization resembling the legend of Pandora’s Box from Greek mythology.

Inspired by the challenging and dangerous migration routes throughout the world, the exhibition focuses on finding hope in the most unpredictable places, both physical and metaphorical, in order to escape and overcome the circumstances such as crisis, fear, and uncertainty. The exhibition questions the concept of hope and its occurrence in various situations. According to research, hope is neither optimistic nor a pessimistic concept: however, it derives from the context of overcoming the barriers we face. Hope also plays the role of flashlight which guides the darkest points of our life journey, exposing the new possibilities, horizons, and opportunities ahead.

Exhibition duration: October 29, 2021 – January 14, 2022
Working hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 12 pm – 8 pm

Location: ARTIM Project Space

Address: 5, Kichik Qala str., Icheri Sheher

Free admission