London
Aidan Salakhova, known as Aidan, is a forthright, confident artist. Since 1989, when the USSR was suddenly and quite bloodlessly dismantled, she has established a large and dedicated following as one of the key protagonists in Moscow’s contemporary art scene. She was born into the city’s cultural elite: her father, Tahir Salahov, was and is a major artist living in Moscow. Her parents originate from oil-rich Azerbaijan, where East and West meet, and where the overwhelming majority of the population is Muslim. Aidan’s work expresses a growing awareness of herself as a desiring woman shaking off suppression. A determination to be true to herself alone co-exists with a cat-and-mouse teasing of the traditional male gaze, a combination that makes her work at once erotic and yet pure, as it flirts with authoritarianism. She focuses on the idea of veiling as a game of hide and seek, and the niqab is transformed into an adornment of proud, unchaste nudity …see the entire review in the print version of May’s Sculpture magazine.
