Historically, carpets, miniature paintings, and decorative oriental patterns play a significant role in forming Azerbaijan’s heritage and aesthetics. Although the Middle East comprises different carpet genres, they share similarities in geometric patterns, oral motifs, and calligraphic shapes. A significant cultural tradition alternates to digital culture and practices, bringing Mammadov’s creative proposition to a global audience and considering how the clash of cultures, between the traditional and the digital, has greatly manifested in Mammadov’s practice and encouraged innovation. By weaving all the data together, Mammadov invites the viewers to understand the significance of and similarities between Middle Eastern carpets and to recreate tangible-world cultures.

Handpicked AI generated compositions from Middle Eastern carpet dataset of
150,000 images. This dataset includes Ottoman, Persian, Azerbaijan, Moroccan and Arabic carpets amongst others. The AI creates imaginary new carpets based on their similarities.

3 Min Animation - 5 ETH

30 Sec Animation - 0.3 ETH

Still - 0.1 ETH

Orkhan Mammadov is pioneering and one of the few innovative media artists from Azerbaijan + since their exhibition with YARAT in 2013; who have also emerged on the international scene since representing his home country in the Venice Biennial in 2019. Currently based in Istanbul, meanwhile travelling worldwide searching for new expressiveness in the post-pandemic world. He mixes eastern heritage representation, popular aesthetics, references to surrealism, and documentary conventions in his AI (artificial intelligence) & ML (machine learning) based installations.

His works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes occurring in technology in the global context with rethinking Middle Eastern cultural heritage.

Mammadov’s works have been exhibited at several international biennales and triennials, including Moscow International Contemporary Art Biennale in Moscow, Russia (2019) and Venice Biennale de Arte in Venice, Italy (2019), Nasimi Festival in Baku, Azerbaijan (2018), Gamma Festival in ST. Petersburg, Russia (2018), IF Istanbul International Film Festival in Istanbul, Turkey (2017), ACCU Festival in Prague, Czech Republic (2017), Dave Festival in Dresden, Germany (2017).