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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): Welcome to This Being Human. I’m your host Abdul-Rehman Malik. On this podcast, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world whose life, ideas and art are shaped by Muslim culture.

Faig Ahmed: I’m not expressing art, so it’s art actually going through me, so I have to do that. So if I’m understanding my role in society, society pushing me to do that, this is actually what artists somehow doing, is reading these subconscious questions that society has. So then it’s formalizing into the art.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): Today we dive into the world of Faig Ahmed, a contemporary artist renowned for his mind-bending approach to traditional Azerbaijani carpet weaving. Once you’ve seen his work, it’s impossible to forget. And maybe you’ve seen it already. But if not, imagine a traditional red patterned carpet from the Muslim world hanging on a wall, but near the bottom the pattern starts to melt and turn into lines that make a pool on the floor. But all of that is actually woven and dyed using the most traditional methods. That’s a classic Faig Ahmed piece. In this conversation we hear how Faig came to create this unique dialogue between the ancient and the modern. Speaking to us from his home outside of Baku, Azerbaijan, Faig tells us the story of how he found himself taking centuries-old craftsmanship and weaving breathtaking avant-garde masterpieces that challenge our perceptions of tradition and modernity. Today, Faig’s carpet creations continue to captivate audiences around the globe, leading a conversation about how modern people relate to the traditions they’ve come from and have sometimes lost.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Faig, I am so excited about today’s interview because once someone is introduced to your work, you can never forget it. It feels like it imprints something on your brain and on your heart. And when you come back to a piece by you, by Faig Ahmed, you know in your heart that I’m looking at a piece by this particular artist. I grew up in a home where my parents loved Persian rugs and the woven rugs. And so ever since I was a child, I was surrounded or rather underneath me were beautiful rugs, which were my parents’ pride and joy. And when I was a kid I used to go to the center of the rug and with my hand I would trace the patterns around and to see where they would go. And the more intricate the rug, the more intricate the pattern would go back and forth and up and down and underneath other things. And I read somewhere, Faig, that you did this too, but you did something a little bit different, didn’t you?

Faig Ahmed: Yes, exactly. This is what I’m also going to say, that I also did the same thing and probably this is how creative minds working to see when we’re looking to carpet, one of the oldest abstract form composition together. Well, I did a lot of things with the carpet that I think but worst maybe, or maybe best thing that I did is I cut carpet off. [laughter] But there was a moment that I don’t like the moment of composition. I said, “This is wrong there.” I don’t know why actually. I don’t know what I was based to say it’s right or wrong, but it wasn’t of course valuable for me.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): So just like me and so many other children across the world, little Faig would use his fingers to trace the intricate patterns on the carpets in his family home. But he couldn’t stop there. Even at a young age, Faig was compelled to reimagine the way these ancient traditional carpets worked. So he took a pair of scissors, chopped them up and rearranged them. It’s one heck of an origin story. You might think Faig’s parents wouldn’t be too happy with him, but it seems his mother saw something special in him from the start.

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Faig Ahmed: So my mother till today she’s saying, “If I didn’t punish you, that’s why you become an artist because I didn’t tell anything to you because you did that, because you cut this,” alter my mother’s, her grandmother’s actual carpet. [laughter] So that was quite old. So that’s why she said, “You have to all the time appreciate me because I give you this kind of opportunity to feel free.”

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Why do you think your mother reacted that way?

Faig Ahmed: Yeah, she really teach me to how really be free, I think. She feel of course bad. She said, “What you did is not good, but I’m not going to tell anything because you built something on it.” Because if I would just did it in the way that I just cut it off, because I built something on it so that’s why she said, “All right.” So it didn’t like I did something bad, so I just turned it into something creative because all walls and actually my room was also like I drawn on this, I did some sculpture, tried to make some sculpture. So that’s why it was quite free. I think my parents mistake that they put this carpet in my room, or maybe it’s not mistakes.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Tell me a little bit Faig, about your early life in Baku. You clearly grew up in a house with beautiful objects. Was art and traditional arts a part of your life?

Faig Ahmed: It wasn’t easy time. So I grew up after the time, just after war where Azerbaijan actually lose and that’s why all mood and all situation in the country wasn’t good. So it was quite dangerous. That’s actually somehow maybe influenced me also to be creative because in the dangerous situation you have to find a creative solutions. But I think this whole situation itself, adapting to the new situation, adapting to the environment that exists. But of course everything gets better and better all the time every year, and I saw that and actually of course now I see huge differences, it’s like totally different countries. But it’s also hard to say that it was tradition because there was a very little tradition after long story of USSR where only tradition was communism. So that’s why most of the traditional arts, traditional way to doing something in craft and something and that wasn’t that developed during that time. So it was hard actually to find some connection with something, to base it on something. And that actually, that questions arise much, much later in my life when I was a student. And after that, when we would artists sit and think about Azerbaijan art and how it can be developed and integrate contemporary art.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): Faig grew up in Baku in the 1980 and 90s, just as the country was steeling itself to declare independence from the USSR. In a land defined by instability, he craved a connection with his ancient heritage.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Was there a moment that you thought to yourself, “I’m going to take up the art of carpet weaving as the way in which to bring this tradition or this lost tradition back to life?”

Faig Ahmed: Well yes, actually. That comes from the question who I am, who I am as a human being, who I am as Azerbaijani, as a Syrian person, or as a Caucasian. So I’m related with this or that world because all this pattern or network, the natural for human society, some part was erased, some part was actually empty, actually absent. So that’s why it was hard to connect with yourself. Also, actually communism somehow related with that because it’s talking about human being as not related with the past, so that’s why that was hard to back to your roots. So that actually was question, what survived communist environment and there was actually very not a lot of things. It was music because music was so strong in Azerbaijan and still today is. They like to create a different styles to mix them. And the same thing with the carpet, because carpet was until today actually, it’s an inspiration for any, I can say now, it’s for any visual cultural objects, like architecture, like a textile itself or dress design. And so that’s why it’s code of this visual base, visual creations.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I love this idea that the carpet and the forms on the carpet are almost the foundational visual culture of all of the rest of culture. You’re born on the carpet, you live on the carpet, you pray on the carpet, you eat on the carpet, you have family time on the carpet, you argue on the carpet, right? It’s that thing that is with you throughout all of the aspects of living. And yet Faig, you took those traditional designs which so connected to your identity and you said this amazing thing just now, you said that the carpet and its forms are a bridge, right? They’re a bridge to a wider culture. And I want to jump there because Faig, your work does something which stays with you long after you’ve witnessed it. Your pieces have a surreal effect on the viewer, almost like an optical illusion. But I have to tell you, Faig, it really messes with my head. My brain is trying to do two or three things at the same time to understand some of your designs. And I’m drawn further and further into it. And I’m trying to understand what’s happened between the traditional form and the traditional form disappearing and the squared carpet turning into something which looks like a puddle of colors and mixed forms and shapes. So I got to ask you Faig, are you trying to mess with my head? Is that what you’re trying to do?

Faig Ahmed: Well, if I’m messing with your head, then I’m messing with first with my head, my own head after. Well it’s a hard question. I never thought about this question.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): When Faig begins working on his carpets, he starts with a seemingly simple question: what’s the difference between stability and instability? How can you take something as familiar as a carpet and make it entirely unfamiliar to its viewer?

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Faig Ahmed: Art in general actually based on these keys of metaphors. So the idea is there, the history is there and something else there because carpet itself is very stable object and it’s taking us to stability. And we used to see as carpet as stable and even some new designs of carpet, they talking about the stability or trying to create new stability, but through the new modern patterns. So it’s a little bit shaking this stability, this symmetry. So then of creating something that we’re calling art actually, but art is something also working inside of, it’s some design not for outside but for inside. Its message is its language, so we are not appreciating the word itself, but when we were reading some text or listening to each other and hopefully we’re getting excited and inspired, et cetera, it’s proportion of chaos and order.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: So tell me Faig, as you began this process of taking these objects of stability, as you said, cultural stability, social stability, and then you make them unstable Faig, you actually do something that takes the stability away. What were you trying to express? What were you trying to do?

Faig Ahmed: So maybe I have to start with a baby idea that I’m not expressing art. So it’s art actually going through me. So I have to do that. If I’m understanding my role in society, society pushing me to do that, this is actually what artists somehow doing, is reading this subconscious questions that society has. So then it’s formalizing into the art that this is what actually probably the viewers feeling when they looking art. And as it’s more understandable for you. So if it’s too understandable then it’s not interesting. Everything of course starting from creating. But before creating, artists have to listen, have to view, so to do art, not create art, but to see art, which already exists there. Stable is death. So if something is stable, something, it’s not move, it’s not exist, it means it’s becoming, so entropy is taking less over of it, so it’s becoming chaos. But if it’s too much movement then it’s also it can be destroyed. So it’s too much energy, of course it’s destroying everything, so everything becoming smaller and smaller. Again, this proportion between the stability and chaos.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: You said something that I want to dig into because it’s a really interesting idea. You as an artist are formalizing into your art the critical questions that society is asking about itself. So Faig, for you, what are these questions? What are the questions that society is asking about itself that you are channeling into an art which is emerging from your engagement with that world and society?

Faig Ahmed: I think one of the major question in almost all societies and also especially growing society is the question is who I am. So there are different levels of asking who I am and people most of the time struggling with that. And it’s very somehow new question because people start to move all around the world and we can be from somewhere and our parents absolutely from different place and we can live in the third place and we can be mixed and everything can be different from place where we was born and probably our grand grandfathers, they even never thought that other countries exist or at least they have never been there, for example.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: It’s so true.

Faig Ahmed: So that’s why I’m asking this question actually. So because I started my life, from long time that was actually one of my goal to travel as much as I can. I really love to travel, to meet other people, other cultures, to learn about the world and just start to understand people even I met first time that we have something very common but the same, that we have something very different. And that was so beautiful to learn actually. So that’s why I think the question is who I am and who we are. When we asking again, I am asking myself, but I’m not alone inside. It’s modern maybe a question. I don’t want to call it a problem, but because it’s not a problem, it’s question. So it’s a question. And if we can get an answer that we are a person, we’re not a part of society anymore, there’s something very new somehow. And during the history, different mystics in the different schools talk about this understanding of yourself, but only yourself without connecting with anything, especially particularly, but generally with everything. So then you’re becoming much wider, much, much connected with a much whole, which is very beautiful world.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): I have a small favorite to ask you. If you enjoy this show, there’s a really quick thing you can do to help us make it even better. Just take five minutes to fill out a short survey. This is the Aga Khan Museum’s first ever podcast and a little bit of feedback will help us measure our impact and reach more people with extraordinary stories from some of the most interesting artists, thinkers and leaders of the kaleidoscope of the Muslim experience. To participate, go to agakhanmuseum.org/tbhsurvey, that’s agachanmuseum.org/tbhsurvey. The link is also in the show notes. Thank you for listening to This Being Human. Now back to the interview.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Let me ask you about a specific piece, Faig. It’s your 2020 piece that was entitled “Doubts.” It’s such a Faig Ahmed piece because you look at it and I know it’s your work right away, but there’s something really quite fantastic about it. It reminds me of the beautiful rugs in my parents’ home, but even more beautiful, even more intricate. The colors are so vibrant and yet it’s hanging on the wall. And then as your eye moves from the intricate stability, as you said, of the designs at the top, and I start to move to that center point from where it all begins, it starts to melt in my eyes. The designs, the colors start to merge and they start to bleed. And then something quite amazing happens. That bleeding, that melting starts to spread across the floor. And of course it’s all woven, it’s all textiles, it’s all threads, it’s all colors. But you’ve woven them in a way that each, it feels like paint melting. The threads are like paint, they melt and now they spread onto the floor. So it started on the wall and it now goes to the floor and it’s like it’s slowly, slowly, slowly melting across the floor until it can’t melt anymore. And then you give it a border and you complete it. And it made me think about this idea Faig, of a form and function. I wonder, does changing the position of the rug with its starting on the wall change the form or purpose of the rug? I wonder if you could talk me through the form and function of your work.

Faig Ahmed: I’m struggling with this, where the function and where the form and so where this lines goes actually. So if you’ll see the carpet actually, the melted one, you want to come closer, you have to step on it. So you have to become part of it. So you’re becoming a part of the room somehow. Actually this somehow story starts from the human culture just to create a comfortable place to sit, but also as a symbol of it’s only the area where only human is and this area is safe, and that’s where it’s this stable.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Okay, so that’s part of the function, that’s part of the function is to create a place of safety.

Faig Ahmed: It even looks safe, but it’s melt, it’s not stable. And I think that last several decades, this question is arising more and more because we’re all becoming more closer to each other. That’s why it’s becoming more danger or other dangers becoming a part of other places, world becoming different. So now we’re living in a different time. It’s reflection of what exists right now. So I don’t have any manifestation. I’m always saying that I don’t have, I’m no one to say something new about anything. So only what I can do is transmit but also to show maybe some perspective.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: As you’re saying that I think about this idea of when our elders, our grandmothers and our grandfathers used to roll the rug and they would carry it with them wherever they would go. And when they wanted to sit or they wanted to pray or they wanted to rest, they just put the carpet down wherever they were in the world, in nature. And that would be their home. Like you said, that would be the space. And they would sit and it was their way of belonging almost. It was their way of being part of something. They brought something of themselves in that rug, in that carpet and all of a sudden they’re present in that place. Do you allow people to touch your work when it’s on display?

Faig Ahmed: Well, I really, really want people to touch work, to touch, not only actually touch but also smell it because it’s all natural. It has this flavor of nature, but trying to get back some old techniques to get some natural dyeing from nature. For example, we’re using flowers and or certain plants so that giving this certain flavors and the special, so it’s really multi-sensory art actually, that you have to touch it, you have to smell it, you have to wash in it. Or sometimes people, if we for example, going to some place for example, to preparing some exhibition, the guys from my teams or even the teams of installation sometimes laying on this and wants to sleep on it [laughter]. And of course there are some managers that say, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Said, “No, that’s okay, this is like, even it’s giving more energy to work.” I don’t want to put some, “Oh, you can’t touch it,” just anyway. Of course it’s not my restrictions, for example, the restriction of museums or gallery, it’s because they’re responsible for these objects. But I really wanted to make people not feel this border between art and human beings. At the end it’s carpet, so it’s durable. As much people will touch as even maybe as much it will get much, much stronger. And again, actually as we mentioned, even if it will lose even some colors, it’ll get even better, more unique. So this is actually a good thing in the carpet. So that’s why, yes, I really liked people to touch it and I really actually like when people in general like communicating with art directly.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Yeah, almost it becomes inaccessible, right? And there’s something about your work that is shocking, disruptive, unusual and accessible. We feel like there’s something that we can engage with. I love the idea by the way, of sleeping on your carpet. I love that idea. It’s interesting. We were talking about “Doubts” with our producer and he said he’d love to pray on the “Doubts” piece actually because what an interesting thing, right? Prayer is all about certainty and accessing God. And here is a piece that is specifically called Doubts made during the pandemic. We’re questioning ourselves in the world. Wouldn’t it be interesting, an interesting kind of juxtaposition? We are praying for certainty on a piece of rug that’s called “Doubts.”

Faig Ahmed: It’s very good that you said that actually. It’s very interesting that you mentioned “Doubts” and the praying because it’s actually there. We can be doubts about life, about we’re choosing, about in general about everything. But if we praying, it means we’re not doubt about God. We’re sure. With it, we’re connected right now. So that’s also making another valid to pray on these rugs. Yes, I think it’s good experiment. I’m ready to experiment it [laughter]. And especially like this, it’s very nice to connect, to bring art actually back to spirituality. This is one of the important works for the artist today is artist. I’m also interested in general how art works as a construction methodology inside of society. Not only separated by understanding how artists work or how art institution work, and especially how other specific part of art work, but as a whole social phenomena, but not only art itself, but also art as a connected with the spiritual and of practice that art is doing. Because I can tell I’m just sitting and thinking and this is all my work, so no, I have to go through different thing and the spirituality is there all the time. So without that, actually I think it’s hard to bring something parallel. Some artists can accept this, I’m not, but as I’m talking and I’m talking with artists a lot, so this is what I’m trying actually to bring some new methodology of what can be next of human interaction and art when art not showing but appearing inside of human conscious directly. So this is just an idea that’s taking me to the absolutely new project on what I’m actually working for the last three, four years about, three, four years. About the last year-and-a-half, me and my team, we bringing this idea to life when we are looking to art using certain medical devices and certain software to understand how human body reacts to art. And so we’re using EEG, which is electroencephalography, which can read human brain function, brain activity, but also heart rate like ECG and face recognition, eye tracking, and eight other parameters that can tell us different things about human body and especially about brain itself. So we’re analyzing right now we are working on AI that will process all this data that we’re collecting. So of course I’m not first, so there was many researchers about that in some laboratories. But the thing is mostly scientists researching, not art itself, but how art influenced the brain. Let’s say one painting, but which part of painting exactly? And how much it can influence or not? Even, like actually, one of the first was my carpets. So we put them in our protocol that people can see and we see actually how, what people like feel, for example, between like my carpets and the classical carpets. And there was difference, actually, there was some difference that we mentioned, but we have to still analyze it and then we’ll come with a certain results with that.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Faig, I just want you to know that if you need an additional volunteer to attach some electrodes to, I’ll happily be a volunteer because I know, I know a lot happens in my mind and heart when I, when I engage with your work. So if you ever need an extra, I’m here, I’m here for you, Faig.

Faig Ahmed: Great. Your, your brain will be very valuable! [laughter]

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Thank you, thank you!

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Faig, tell me about a joy or a meanness that came to you recently as an unexpected visitor.

Faig Ahmed: [laughter] Well, I had, it was several visitors. Actually, they come all together because I’m living in the countryside. So I get a fox in this recently. Well, I take it as a symbol because there was some connection when something happened in my life and that I saw a fox and turtle together. That was very unexpected and they play with each other. So that was cool.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: Wow.

Faig Ahmed: Yeah, they try to, I don’t know, talk or get some interaction with each other. So yes. And thank you very much for a beautiful poem. This is very touching and I think it’s very interesting that you mentioned that exactly this poem. Yeah.

Abdul-Rehman Malik: I love the idea that you are living in the countryside, working with data from human brains, making these glitchy carpets, and the fox and the turtle show up and they try to become friends in your yard.

Faig Ahmed: Yes. So it’s if all strange things connect together, then yeah, then art can happen actually all this way.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik: Faig, it’s been such a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for being with us on This Being Human.

Faig Ahmed: Thank you, Abdul-Rehman. Thank you very much for the great pleasure time.

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Abdul-Rehman Malik (VO): You can see Faig’s amazing work at www.FaigAhmed.com and on Instagram @FaigAhmedStudio. This Being Human is presented by the Aga Khan Museum. Through the arts, the Aga Khan Museum sparks wonder, curiosity, and understanding of Muslim cultures and their connection with other cultures. This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO. Our senior producer is Imran Ali Malik. Our associate producer is Emily Morantz. Our executive producers are Laura Regehr and Stuart Coxe. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Original music by Boombox Sound. Katie O’Connor is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.