Three brightly coloured, highly saturated figurative paintings, Agil Abdullayev’s series ‘Pretties from South Caucasus’ (2024) situates the artists’ personal experience within a wider cultural context of performed identity. The simplified soft and curving motifs of cars and plants, plus the suggestive pose of the central fluorescent pink male figure, speak to the confluence of masculine and feminine. In the context of the conservative social norms of Abdullayev’s home country of Azerbaijan these playful paintings are also provocative and challenging.

Through bold colour, graphic outlines and a flat treatment of space Abdullayev carves out a queer alternate space reminiscent of a cartoon environment. These, however, are not utopian idealised environments. In the anonymity of the central character and the cultural allusions to social media, emojis and gay porn, the Pretties series considers how gestures and codes create bonds within subcultures but also conceal much. Largely naked with their faces hidden by mobile phones, these figures simultaneously reveal and withhold their identity. Abdullayev prompts us to consider the different versions of ourselves we present to the world, and to question the essence of identity that lies beneath exterior performance.

Agil Abdullayev (b. 1992) is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, photography, and painting. Their practice investigates shifting notions of identity, trauma, vulnerability, and escapism as they move through public and private memory. Often semi-biographical, Abdullayev’s films draw on childhood experiences and personal queer archives, expanding into work shaped by diaries, essays, and close collaboration with local communities. Through alter-egos, intimacy, self-reflection, and emotional extremities, they construct spaces of hyperpossibility where representations can be disrupted, re-articulated, and reinvented. Prizes include: second prize, Fluxus Museum Prize for Experimental Video (2025), the Golden Cube Award at Kassel Dokfest (2024), Seed Award from the Prince Claus Foundation (2022), Artlink Prize, SudKultur Fond 2022. Exhibitions and presentations include: MoMA Tbilisi; Istanbul Contemporary Istanbul; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem; Tate, London; Liverpool Biennial; South London Gallery; and Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong. Residencies: Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Meet Factory, Cittadellarte, Goethe Institute, and Artlinks CEC.