Artist Talk

Formally trained as a painter with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Azerbaijani State Art Academy, Tora has experimented with performance and video art at the onset of her career. Her performance piece in a format of a video installation entitled ‘Mood’ was on display at the first Azerbaijani pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennial in 2007.

In her early paintings, Tora applied her academic style inspired by social realism to a more contemporary context. In her current work, exhibited at Gallery Under The Mango Tree, Tora has taken on a more subversive tone with which she challenges and scrutinises the accepted narratives of femininity and female representation in classical paintings. While upending these traditional narratives, the subjects of Tora’s paintings inhabited a setting imbued with magic and melancholia. For example her voluptuous mermen depicted languishing in lush vegetation or picturesque swamps are reminiscent of Rubenesque female nudes of the Baroque period, yet here, their traditional gender roles were inverted. 

Join us while getting into conversation with Tora about her inspirations, techniques and perceptions of the world.