Aida Mahmudova: Under the Same Sky
A Project of Sapar Contemporary Central Asian Incubator
November 20, 2025 – January 16, 2026
‘The sky leans on the earth, and the earth on silence’
Adunis, “Desert” (1960)
Every fragment of earth bears the quiet imprint of time, holding the memory of light, erosion, transformation, and carrying within it a record of both human and geological histories. In Mahmudova’s work, the space between sky and ground becomes a site of attention and artistic inquiry — where materials speak, where the surface of a glaze, the edge of a stone, or the shimmer of sand reveals the vocabulary of landscape. Here, material stands as both witness and voice, translating the subtle correspondences between earth, body, time, memory and place that unfold across her practice.
The sculptural pieces from the Stone Travellers series (2025) are the culmination of an ongoing research-based practice exploring the intersection of ceramics and natural stone. Emerging as a material laboratory initiated by the artist in 2024, the project reflects on the rapid urban transformation of the region and reconsiders cultural patrimony as a speculative, forward-looking practice. Reviving and expanding traditional ceramic techniques, Mahmudova blends alchemical and biochemical experimentation to examine how matter records time, process, and change.
The ceramics feature handmade glazes composed of materials locally sourced in Azerbaijan — including oil, ash, seashells, sand, clay, and stone — resulting in a process that is both grounded in the landscape and singular in form.
Drawing inspiration from cairns — stone markers composed of vertically stacked, pillar-like stones that historically served as funerary, commemorative, memorial, and guiding landmarks — the artist reimagines these ritualistic forms as personal repositories of memory. These vernacular structures channel the momentum of time and serve as navigational stones for the artist herself, mapping an intimate and symbolic terrain that also echoes the mythic stones of Azerbaijan, such as Pirvənzərə — a sacred female rock once believed to grant fertility and renewal, linking personal memory to ancestral ritual and landscape.
In dialogue with her sculptural practice, Mahmudova unveils a new body of fiber works from the Floating Grounds series (2025), combining hand-edited photo prints of natural and industrial sites, spontaneously captured by the artist during acts of artistic walking and seeing. Transferred onto unbleached textiles through printing and stitching processes, the fabric surfaces remain tactile, absorbing traces of place and time. By juxtaposing views of rocks, quarries, power lines, forests, and riverbeds, the artist maps the shifting boundaries between the organic and the industrial and invites reflections on the landscape itself as an archive in continuous transformation.
About Artist
Aida Mahmudova (b. 1982, Baku, Azerbaijan) lives and works in Baku. Mahmudova earned a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. In her artistic practice, she explores themes of memory, place, and belonging, and experiments with materiality through installations, sculpture, and painting.
Mahmudova has exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art in Baku, MAXXI Museum in Rome, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Leila Heller Gallery and Sapar Contemporary Gallery in New York, Gazelli Art House and Saatchi Gallery in London. aMahmudova exhibited at the 55th Venice Biennale in the group show Love Me, Love Me Not (2013) and in the 56th Venice Biennale as part of VITA VITALE curated by Artwise (2015). Mahmudova is also the founder of YARAT Contemporary Art Space in Baku.