Location: The museum space of the Palace Mosque

of the Shirvanshahs’ Palace Complex, Baku, AZ

Date: 02.05.2026

Curator: Sabina Shikhlinskaya

Coordinator: Agnessa Tariverdiyeva

The Atesh Hub platform, in partnership with Icherisheher, will present a public artistic and educational program as part of the International Carpet Festival. In the contemporary world, the carpet retains functions close to religious or sacred ones, especially in cultures where it serves not merely as an interior object, but as a carrier of ethnocultural identity, history, and spiritual traditions. To expand this theme for a wider audience, the program will be presented within the museum space of the Palace Mosque of the Shirvanshahs’ Palace Complex. It will consist of lecture-presentations by Atesh Hub curators Mansura Mammadaliyeva and Bakhtiyar Ali, accompanied by a video installation featuring projections of works by Atesh Hub artists - Ramil Mammadli, Ellada Aghayeva, Alina Yusupova, Timur Zaripov, and Huseyn Jalil. The total duration of the program is four hours, divided into two parts of two hours each. Attendance at the lecture-presentations is available by prior registration. The language of the lectures is Azerbaijani.

About the program:
The lecture-presentation by curator and art historian Mansura Mammadaliyeva, titled “From Ornament to Algorithm: The Evolution of the Azerbaijani Carpet from Tradition to Contemporary Practice,” will address the transformation of the Azerbaijani carpet from cultural consciousness to digital art.
The lecture-presentation by curator and art theorist B. Ali, titled “From Pattern to Alphabet: A Journey of Visual Language,” explores the evolution of visual language from ornament to semiotic system. Mentor of Atesh Hub - Honored Artist of Azerbaijan, curator Sabina Shikhlinskaya. Coordinator - Agnessa Tariverdiyeva.

Ramil Mammadli
is a digital and conceptual artist from Baku, Azerbaijan. Before entering the visual art world, he was deeply involved in hip-hop culture as a dancer, where he developed a strong sense of rhythm, movement, and spatial awareness — elements that now define his artistic language. His works explore the intersection of technology, faith, memory, and the human soul through abstract cyber-futuristic compositions. He is the creator of the “Soul System” and “SF (Synaptic Faith)” collections, in which the circle symbolizes the soul navigating digital structures. 

Huseyn Jalil
is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice traverses the intersections of art and science, encompassing visual arts, land art, photography, video, and experimental media. Grounded in biology, his work investigates the morphologies and adaptive systems of living organisms, transforming scientific inquiry into a visual language. His early fascination with entomology and microbiology evolved into a conceptual framework where biological phenomena become metaphors for perception and transformation. Huseyn’s journey as an artist is rooted in a diverse educational background. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts, and his Master’s from the Azerbaijan University of Architecture and Construction. He further expanded his practice through the YARAT Contemporary Art School, where he deepened the engagement with contemporary methodologies and interdisciplinary experimentation.

Alina Yusupova

Graduated from the Azerbaijan State Academy of Arts in Baku, majoring in Textile Art. Graduated from the Royal School of Traditional Arts in London. Successfully completed the Contemporary Art School program at YARAT. Works: Life performance “All and Nothing” at the exhibition “Between the Sky and the Earth”, Heydar Aliyev Center. Performance “The Way” at the exhibition “Keçmiş nəsillərdən qalan izlər”, YARAT ARTIM. Life performance “The Black is the Colour of the Absolute” as part of the “Night at the Museum” project, YARAT.

Ellada Aghayeva

Digital artist based in Baku, Azerbaijan. Graduated from the Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts with a BA in Modern Art in 2023. She continued her education at YARAT Contemporary Art School, graduating in 2024. She works as a graphic designer, children’s book illustrator, and 2D frame-by-frame animation artist. Her practice centers on animation as an emotional and conceptual medium. Rather than static images, she creates experiences through movement and sound. Using simple elements to represent complex ideas and inner states, her work invites viewers to pause, reflect, and form personal interpretations. She is particularly interested in the moment when an abstract idea suddenly becomes clear and tangible to the viewer. She explores the themes of infinity, identity, the cycle of life and legacy.

Timur Zaripov

is a multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Tokyo, Japan. He started his creative career in 2021 as a musician and subsequently expanded into contemporary art. He is a graduate of the YARAT Contemporary Art School program (2024-2025). Timur works with various mediums such as music, video art, photography, digital art, 3D art, sculptures, and installation. As an artist he draws his inspiration from escapism, technology and the ways people communicate and interact with it. His video and installation works often engage with themes of memory, purification and ephemerality — images and sounds that surface briefly before dissolving, tracing the space between remembering and forgetting. In his visual practice Timur explores the relationship between digital processes and physical space, as well as the tension between the organic and the synthetic. Water recurs throughout his work as both subject and metaphor — a medium for cleansing, renewal and the passage of time.