Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed is no stranger to fiber arts. Most of his works revolve around the construction and deconstruction of intricately patterned rugs and carpets. This three-dimensional installation straightforwardly titled Thread Installation deals with this similar concept of visualizing the breakdown of a complex design. Using the rectangular body of a typically Middle Eastern rug, Ahmed forms the contours of geometric patterns with thread, but two corners of the frame are left incomplete. These unfinished edges extend, in long pieces of thread, past the confines of the wall the rest of the work is affixed to as though the conceptual rug is unravelling. Or, perhaps, we’ve caught a still moment just as the structure is being woven right before our very eyes.
In his artist’s statement, Ahmed says “I’ve been always fond of investigating and researching every detail of anything that had interested me and sometimes this researches reached inconceivable depths mixing up with my imagination. I’m heretofore harried by a question others have left in childhood – “what is inside?”. That’s why I’m changing habitual and visually static objects making them spatial, giving them a new depth. And this as if reveals the essence of this object – the object that was mediocre just a minute ago.”
