art. culture. wild. a coNde Nast publicatioN wiNter 2015/2016
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Oscar de la renta - MexicO city v BOgOta - artists On instagraM
uk/international
p98 Spinning a Yarn
p80 Some Enchanted Evening
p76 Portraits of the Artist
p64 An Englishman in New York
p104 Fields of Gold
p126 Vintage Vision
Editor’s letter
ALAN GELATI.
hat colour do you associate with winter? The obvious answer is white, for snow, or no colour at all, for the sheet of cloud across many skies during the short winter days. But for me, winter does mean colour; it means sitting inside surrounded by the decorative carpets, tapestries and embroidery of my home country, drinking our local tea, its own deep ochre a perfect blend with the interior surroundings. With its rich history, Azerbaijan is a country that you can revel in during the cold months. I hope you get a favour of this from this issue, in particular the fashion shoot, located in Villa Petrolea, one of Baku’s historic mansions, and in the illustrations of the city’s Old Town. Elsewhere in the magazine, we also have a wealth of art to match the artistry of Baku: Erik Bulatov and Joana Vasconselos both give enthralling interviews, and Simon de Pury relives the highlights of his Instagram collection of famous artists, including the likes of Gerhard Richter. We have an interview with Oscar de la Renta creative director Peter Copping, and, again where fashion meets art, with the east London-based hero to many young designers, Lulu Kennedy. Speaking of the cold, I was fascinated by my recent visit to Iceland, a country which has a richness of wildlife and ecosystems. The green theme continues in our feature on ecoarchitecture. Enjoy the chill, and see you in the spring.
Leyla Aliyeva Editor-in-Chief
27 Baku.
Contents SKETCHES HOT WHEELS
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114
INSTA-MAN
CULTURE FIX
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122
CLEAR SIGHT
OBJETS D’ART
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126
VINTAGE VIEW
MAPPED OUT
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132
THE BREATHING LAND
ON THE RADAR
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137
BAKU EYE
GO EAST
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146
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
CLEAN PLATES
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A peek under the bonnet of Baku’s frst motor show.
Winter events, including art, music, dance, food and fashion, plus a chance to relive the glittering days of disco.
Star products, from Ai Weiwei’s frst foray into jewellery to an architecturally inspired handbag.
Top restaurants around the world where art is on the menu.
Chemistry lessons from LA-based artist Hayden Dunham.
Why being spotted by Fashion East founder Lulu Kennedy is a golden ticket for young designers.
The Asian company urging carnivores to change their eating habits for the good of the planet.
HIP TO BE SQUARE
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SERIOUS PLAY
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The legacy of minimalist design pioneer Donald Judd.
Azerbaijani mathematician Messoud Efendiyev mixes it up.
CANVAS AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK
Fashion designer Peter Copping on the highs and lows of stepping into the shoes of Oscar de la Renta.
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MEXICO CITY V BOGOTA
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PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST
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Latin America’s big-hitting art cities go head to head.
The acclaimed Russian artist talks about his career and the diffculty of painting a simple landscape.
Portrait art for the 21st century with Simon de Pury.
Photographer Emil Khalilov on what compels him to brave the elements in the High Caucasus.
Baku’s historic Old Town reimagined.
An evocative exploration of Iceland’s rugged beauty.
Baku’s cultural barometer of cutting-edge trends on the international art scene.
Landscape architects are the new stars of the show when it comes to high-profle urban developments.
CATALOGUE
155
THE BUZZ
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MY ART
159
ALL IN THE MIND
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THE ARTIST
162
HISTORY LESSON
164
THE ILLUSTRATOR
167
THE CIRCUIT
Diners will be spoilt for choice with two new Baku openings.
Ruth Chapman of Matchesfashion.com invites us over.
A very brief history of yoga and how to dress for it.
Azerbaijan as seen through the lens of Sanan Aleskerov.
The writing’s on the rocks at the Gobustan Preserve.
The energy of life under the sea.
People, places and parties around the world.
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING
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172
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
SPINNING A YARN
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174
ENDANGERED SPECIES NO. 3
FIELDS OF GOLD
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176
TABULA RASA
A fairy-tale take on winter fashion.
Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos on how she weaves humble objects into complex sculptures.
The nourishing culinary traditions of Nakhchivan.
We predict the future with selected new talents.
Saving the rare Caucasian leopard.
Russian designer Olga Roh gets cultural in Baku.
COVER. Photographed by WENDY BEVAN. Styled by NIKKI BREWSTER. Corset by MARQUES’ALMEIDA. Jewellery by PEBBLE LONDON.
ART. CULTURE. WILD.
A CONDE NAST PUBLICATION winter 2015/2016
Editor-in-Chief Editor-in-Chief, Condé Nast Creative Director
Leyla Aliyeva Darius Sanai
Daren Ellis
Managing Editor
Maria Webster
Associate Editor
Laura Archer
Acting Chief Sub-Editor Editorial Assistant Editor-at-Large
Contributing Editors
Picture Editor Designer Sub-Editor Production Controller
Deputy Editor, Russian Baku Magazine Director, Freud Communications Director, Media Land LLC in Baku/Advertising
Co-ordination in Baku
Deputy Managing Director President, Condé Nast International
Andrew Lindesay Francesca Peak Simon de Pury
Maryam Eisler Jarrett Gregory Dylan Jones Emin Mammadov Hervé Mikaeloff Harriet Quick Kenny Schachter Nick Hall Arijana Zeric Julie Alpine Emma Storey
Tamilla Akhmedova Hannah Pawlby Khayyam Abdinov +994 50 286 8661; info@medialand.az Matanet Bagieva
Albert Read Nicholas Coleridge
BAKU magazine has taken all reasonable eforts to trace the copyright owners of all works and images and obtain permissions for the works and images reproduced in this magazine. In the event that any of the untraceable copyright owners come forward after publication, BAKU magazine will endeavour to rectify the position accordingly. BAKU magazine is distributed globally by COMAG Specialist, Tavistock Works, Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex, UB7 7QX; tel +44 1895 433800. © 2015/2016 The Condé Nast Publications Ltd, Vogue House, Hanover Square, London W1S 1JU, United Kingdom; tel +44 20 7499 9080; fax +44 20 7493 1469. Colour origination by CLX Europe Media Solutions Ltd. Printed by Pureprint Group. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.
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Contributors
is a London-based freelance illustrator and artist who specializes in pictures of women. If you could play a musical instrument, which one would you choose? Either the accordion, because it’s stupidly charming, or the piano, on the condition I could sing along like Nina Simone, too (which I can’t). Winter is upon us: sofa or skis? Sofa. Do you prefer a book or an e-reader for reading? An e-reader. I have become a bit addicted to the glow of a screen. What do you like most about illustrating fashion subjects (p64)? The fantasy. Clothes are a passport to a different existence.
MICHAEL BROOKS
is the author of several books, a journalist and an editorial consultant at New Scientist. If you could play a musical instrument, which one would you choose? I already play the bass (in two covers bands) but I’d love to be able to play the piano. Winter is upon us: sofa or skis? Can I go to a tropical beach instead? Do you prefer a book or an e-reader for reading? A book every time. What was the most interesting aspect of meeting Messoud Efendiyev (p59)? His conviction that you shouldn’t stay in your own feld for too long.
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SIMON DE PURY
is a Swiss auctioneer, art consultant and collector. He lives in London. If you could play a musical instrument, which one would you choose? I’d love to play the piano like Brad Mehldau or Elton John. Winter is upon us: sofa or skis? Après-ski! Do you prefer a book or an e-reader for reading? I don’t read books (I don’t have the attention span). What made you think of using Instagram for documenting artists (p114)? When during a studio visit I was looking at Alex Israel from the side and felt compelled to photograph him as it evoked his now iconic self-portraits.
SHIRINE SAAD
is a Lebanese arts and lifestyle writer, editor and blogger. She lives in New York. If you could play a musical instrument, which one would you choose? I’d love to play the alto saxophone, and to learn free jazz and experimental music. Winter is upon us: sofa or skis? Ideally both! Ski, then hot chocolate and bourbon on the sofa. Do you prefer a book or an e-reader for reading? I’m old-fashioned and prefer books. What is the most exciting aspect about the Latin American art scene (p70)? The ways in which artists are negotiating their sociopolitical realities to create authentic work.
BOBBY EVANS OF TELEGRAMME STUDIO
is an illustrator who lives and works in London. Clients include Penguin and Vodafone. If you could play a musical instrument, which one would you choose? I play drums and have been trying to play guitar for a few years. But if I could go back, I’d learn piano. Winter is upon us: sofa or skis? Snowboard. Do you prefer a book or an e-reader for reading? You can’t beat the feel of a real book. What did you find most interesting about the Old Town (p126)? Its maze-like feel: you can walk around all day and keep fnding new passages and more beautiful buildings.
FRANCESCA PEAK
is the editorial assistant at Baku. If you could play a musical instrument, which one would you choose? I like to think I’m good at multitasking, so I could handle the various components of a drum kit. Winter is upon us: sofa or skis? I love to ski, but the lure of the sofa and a mug of mulled wine is impossible to resist. Do you prefer a book or an e-reader for reading? I read a lot of autobiographies and books give a greater sense of history. What do you enjoy most about yoga (p159)? Taking a moment to put everything down and just breathe. Oh, and yoga pants!
ILLUSTRATIONS BY NINA HUNTER.
SUSIE HOGARTH
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( Sketches
DMITRY TERNOVOY.
Over a century of automotive history was celebrated recently at the frst ever classic car exhibition to be held in Baku. Co-organized by the Automobile Federation of Azerbaijan alongside the Classic Remise centre for vintage cars in Germany and the Musée national de l’automobile in France, the show was held at the Heydar Aliyev Centre. The president of the Federation, Anar Alakbarov, was attracted by, in his own words, “the combination of modernity and tradition” that classic cars embody. From the earliest 19th-century horseless carriages to the vast expanses of a 1970s Lincoln Continental, the car’s evolution in size, speed, luxury and utility was clearly charted. Vehicles ranged from a tiny BMW Isetta ‘bubble’ car to a 1969 Russian GAZ 13 Chaika limousine (only government offcials were allowed these), and from a Willys MB to the 1950s Porsche 550A Spyder, pictured here.
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Hot Wheels
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WHERE IT’S AT THIS SEASON
THE BIG PICTURE UNTIL 24 JANUARY DISCO: THE BILL BERNSTEIN PHOTOGRAPHS
Where Serena Morton, London What The legendary portrait photographer has worked with Paul McCartney and Keith Richards, but it’s his images of the 1970s disco scene that have truly captured an era and stood the test of time. A selection of pictures from his just-published book will be on display in this exhibition, taking you right back to the heady heyday of Studio 54. serenamorton.com 37 Baku.
Where Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, London What The ‘Women’ series by the renowned portrait photographer (pictured above, with her daughters) starts a global, year-long tour in London, before moving to nine other cities. The series, begun 15 years ago, will include new portraits of Venus and Serena Williams and Caitlyn Jenner. ubs.com/annieleibovitz
29 JANUARY–14 FEBRUARY WINTER CARNIVAL
Where Québec City, Canada What With origins dating back to 1893, the world’s largest winter festival celebrates all things Canadian, with highlights including an ice palace, snow sculptures, dog-sled races and gastronomic delights. carnaval.qc.ca
UNTIL 15 JULY IRIS VAN HERPEN: TRANSFORMING FASHION
Where High Museum of Art, Atlanta What The young Dutch fashion designer is celebrated with the frst major exhibition of her work in the U.S. The infuences on her haute couture designs are examined, alongside some of the frst outfts to be created with a 3D printer, including her Hybrid Holism dress (pictured). high.org
15 JANUARY–16 APRIL FAIRY TALE FASHION
Where Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), New York What This exhibition explores the role of fashion in fairy tales, from Cinderella’s glass slipper to Little Red Riding Hood’s cape. Designs dating back to 1895 will be on display alongside pieces from contemporary luminaries, as will photographs from Kirsty Mitchell’s award-winning Wonderland series (pictured). ftnyc.com
3–7 FEBRUARY TRANSMEDIALE
Where Berlin What The relationship between art, culture and technology is explored by hundreds of artists and media researchers to create a dialogue centred on technology in modern life. The city-wide festival attracts over 20,000 attendees every year, who are treated to conferences, displays and screenings, each presenting a different view on the common theme. transmediale.de
11 FEBRUARY–MAY (tbc) OSCAR MURILLO 13–18 JANUARY MONA FOMA
Where Hobart, Tasmania What Curated by Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie, the annual festival of music and art (FOMA) returns to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Headlined by The Flaming Lips, the festival will also feature British artist duo Gilbert & George and musician Kim Myhr. mofo.net.au 38 Baku.
13–16 JANUARY EUROSONIC NOORDESLAG
Where Groningen, Netherlands What Heralding itself as the European music platform, hundreds of new acts perform for over 40,000 discerning music fans and almost 4,000 conference attendees. Music both homegrown and from across Europe is celebrated, so there’s bound to be something for everyone. eurosonic-noorderslag.nl
Where Yarat Contemporary Art Centre, Baku What The Columbian artist will bring his Frequencies project (pictured) to Baku, after its stints elsewhere, including India, Honduras and Kenya. Murillo has invited schoolchildren to write their thoughts, worries and whatever else they wish on canvases fxed to their desks. The result is an invaluable insight into young, curious minds and a visual delight. Running concurrently is an exhibition of new work by renowned Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed. yarat.az
PREVIOUS PAGE: © BILL BERNSTEIN/REEL ART PRESS/DISCO: THE BILL BERNSTEIN PHOTOGRAPHS BY REEL ART PRESS. THIS PAGE: © ANNIE LEIBOVITZ. BART OOMES, NO.6 STUDIOS © IRIS VAN HERPEN. SIMON ARMSTRONG. © CAMILLA BLAKE. COURTESY OSCAR MURILLO. BART HEEMSKERK. SEAN FENNESSY/COURTESY MONA MUSEUM OF OLD AND NEW ART, HOBART. © KIRSTY MITCHELL.
16 JANUARY–7 FEBRUARY WOMEN: NEW PORTRAITS BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
( ( OBJETS D’ART
China in Your Hand In a unique exhibition at Elisabetta Cipriani jewellers in London, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has designed and hand-shaped three bands of 24-carat gold, to be worn as earrings, a necklace and bracelet (right). The delicate pieces pay tribute to the 70,000 people killed by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and the pieces are housed in a large wooden structure designed by the artist. elisabettacipriani.com
Feeling Blue
COMPILED BY FRANCESCA PEAK. COURTESY AI WEIWEI AND RICCARDO ABATE.
Kenzo’s third collaboration with the Blue Marine Foundation features a dazzling blue ombre scarf, with the iconic Kenzo lion and the tuna emblem, representing the ocean. A portion of the profts will be supporting the Blue Marine Foundation in their efforts to preserve the diversity of marine life and stem the effects of climate change. kenzo.com
Not Your Average Bag
Wrap Up in British Luxury
Super Legacy
The clean lines and geometric shape of this hand-painted M2MALLETIER handbag were inspired by Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass, and brought to life in calfskin leather and contrasting metallic details. m2malletier.com
What happens when you combine Britain’s most beloved knitwear brand with one of the hottest new fashion talents to emerge from London in recent years? Find out with this 15-piece collection. Up-and-coming designer Eudon Choi has added delightful winter details to Brora’s classic knits, such as embroidered skis and bright blocks of colour, making this a delightful way to keep warm this season. brora.co.uk
Naomi Campbell has had a remarkable career, working with some of the world’s best photographers and designers, and breaking boundaries in modelling. These achievements are celebrated in this eponymous book, which features images from Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier and Helmut Newton, alongside autobiographical text from Campbell herself. taschen.com 41 Baku.
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Art à la Carte
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Think what’s on the wall is more important than what’s on your plate? Here are 15 places for you. Illustration by MAYUKO FUJINO 1 Mr Chow’s, Los Angeles, USA Works by Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Jasper Johns greet diners who come to this Hollywood institution for feel-good Chinese food and celebrity sightings. mrchow.com
4 Sexy Fish, London, UK Twenty fsh-shaped lamps, a four-metre-long alligator by Frank Gehry and a hand-painted ceiling designed by Michael Roberts are just three of the reasons why it’s impossible to get a table at this new hotspot. sexyfsh.com
2 Tru, Chicago, USA 5 Heavenly Rembrandt, Amsterdam, the Netherlands The indulgent menu may feature For only two weeks a year, Kobe beef and white truffe, but the Rembrandt Tower’s top it’s the visual feast that steals the foor becomes an art and food show: pieces by Yves Klein and experience. After a curator talk, Vik Muniz hang on plain white sit among the master’s work and walls, creating a gallery-quiet enjoy the view. rtboardroom.nl atmosphere. trurestaurant.com 3 Vina Vik, Millahue, Chile 6 The 200km drive from capital Santiago is worth it for the stunning hotel and site-specifc art from local artists, never mind the Chilean cuisine expertly paired with wines from the restaurant’s own vineyard. vik.cl 42 Baku.
7 Snow Restaurant, Kemi, Finland Temperatures sink to -15ºC in winter, but the exquisite beauty of the restaurant’s carved, icy walls should stave off the chill. No two visits are the same: the building is redesigned every year. visitkemi.f 3
La Colombe d’Or, Saint-Paul de Vence, France Former patrons Picasso and Matisse settled their bills here with original pieces of art when they were out of cash, transforming a modest dining room into an arty must-visit. la-colombe-dor.com
8 Essaraya, Tunis, Tunisia Eating in this medieval palace feels like visiting a museum, thanks to the ornate mosaic tiles on the walls, Ottoman-era paintings and elaborate rugs in striking colours. The warmly spiced cuisine is delicate and delicious. essaraya.tn 9 The Tasting Room, Franschhoek, South Africa As if the eight-course degustation menu wasn’t enough excitement, the restaurant is furnished with art from local artists, including a striking bright orange mountain mural across one wall. lqf.co.za
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COMPILED BY FRANCESCA PEAK.
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10 Bolshoi, Moscow, Russia With interiors designed by Ralph Lauren and art from Dietrich Klinge and Pierre Soulages, among others, this indulgent dining spot is ideally positioned opposite the Bolshoi Theatre, for a day full of art. novikovgroup.ru
13 Bibo, Hong Kong Works by contemporary art luminaries dominate the room, with Banksy, Keith Haring and Shepard Fairey, who designed the iconic Obama ‘Hope’ poster, all represented. Another highlight is the extensive tasting menu. bibo.hk
11 Art Garden, Baku, Azerbaijan Stemming off the historic courtyard are 10 dining rooms, each big enough for just one table and each decorated by an eminent Azerbaijani artist. The country’s diverse cuisine is also celebrated. artgroup.az
14 Lucio’s, Sydney, Australia This restaurant’s building was once a gallery: look closely and you’ll notice that visiting artists, including Charles Blackman and the late Sidney Nolan, have lent their talents to not only the walls, but also the napkins and tablecloths. lucios.com.au
12 Ultraviolet, Shanghai, China Each night, 10 diners are treated to a 20-course multisensory experience, with lighting, music and video projections bouncing around the room as you eat. A meal unlike any other. uvbypp.cc
15 Nihau Cafe, Wellington, New Zealand The menu at this local favourite may be short and sweet, but the photographic series by Kiwi artist Ans Westra, depicting New Zealanders’ daily lives, keeps people coming back. nikaucafe.co.nz
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Portrait by Julian Berman
os Angeles-based artist Hayden Dunham grew up in Austin, Texas, but could have been transported to us from a remote galaxy, such is her curiosity about the world. “I have always been excited about the potential of objects,” Dunham explains. Like a scientifc laboratory, her studio is where she develops new materials. Dunham’s substance ‘GEL’ played a central role in her recent contribution to the three-person exhibition ‘EVERYTHINGS’ at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. “GEL took on multiple forms, vapour, liquid and powder, and was developed to supplement the objects in the exhibition. It also circulated through the air vents of the gallery,” she says. Exploring how chemical and medical industries will affect the human body, Dunham cites numerous cases in which substances have altered humankind, from the chemical C8 (Perfuorooctanoic acid) that through silent distribution has come to exist autonomously in the majority of individuals, to Lance Armstrong’s transformation of his body into a brand and machine. In her work, Dunham questions whether humans will become increasingly more like objects. “My practice is more about listening than projecting my own desires for how I want an object to behave… It is about creating conditions in which they can become effective without me.” It seems certain that as Dunham’s career continues, her contributions will be long-lasting, synthesizing the extreme unease and possibility that characterizes our period in time.
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LA artist Hayden Dunham concocts strange substances with which she tantalizes her audience, says Jarrett Gregory.
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Under the Skin
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Jarrett Gregory is an associate curator at LACMA in Los Angeles. 45 Baku.
CAMERA PRESS.
n a sunny Saturday afternoon in September, those wandering through London’s Soho might have noticed something of a commotion on Greek Street. This was the location of Fashion East’s spring/summer 2016 presentations at London Fashion Week – with three designers presenting in three different venues on the same street. Models for Caitlin Price – all haute streetwear – occupied the Soho Revue Gallery, while the Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design was a youth club for the day, with models busy eating McDonald’s burgers while wearing the hip, minimalist designs of This Is The Uniform. Across the street was Richard Malone – a symphony of off-colours and clever references – at restaurant L’Escargot. Fashion editors – and the occasional celebrity such as Abbey Clancy – completed the scene. It was a riot for the senses, an unmissable moment in the season, and the work of one Lulu Kennedy. Kennedy, sometimes dubbed the fairy godmother of London fashion, is a major player. Since setting up Fashion East 15 years ago, she has showcased designers including Jonathan Saunders, Craig Green, Marques’Almeida, Roksanda Ilincic, Henry Holland and countless more, across a format that takes three up-and-coming talents each season, and fnances (with the help of sponsorship from Topshop and MAC) their shows for two seasons at London Fashion Week and then coaches them through the all-important sales appointments with the world’s buyers in Paris. While a panel of industry experts including American Vogue’s Sarah Mower and the
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Portrait by ANDREW CROWLEY
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If you’re curious about the next big must-have label, look to Fashion East, the design collective dreamed up by talent-spotting queen Lulu Kennedy, says Lauren Cochrane.
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Go East
Lulu Kennedy in her studio in the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London.
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1. Financial Times’s Charlie Porter all provide their thoughts, Kennedy’s nose for talent is Fashion East’s secret weapon. As the reputation of Fashion East has grown, so has Kennedy’s infuence. That’s what happens when you know how to pick designers who go stratospheric. “There is a strong handful of designers who have made it in London,” says Kennedy. “Erdem, Mary Katrantzou, Jonathan Saunders, Roksanda. Those are the kids who have become brands. Some of those are from the Fashion East stable and that feels brilliant.” With her mane of wild curls, feline green eyes and ready smile, Kennedy’s relentless positivity is something of a trademark. It may be what has helped her stay ahead of the pack, as the landscape of London fashion has changed around her. Meeting up days after London Fashion Week has fnished, I fnd her wearing an Ashley Williams sweater and Marques’Almeida jeans (both 48 Baku.
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“LULU KENNEDY NOT ONLY HAS A GREAT EYE BUT IS A GREAT MENTOR, HELPING DESIGNERS TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES WITH BUSINESS IN MIND.” designers are Fashion East alums), busying herself with emails as a fat white goes cold on the table in front of her. Kennedy is a woman in demand. The last fve years have been something of a whirl for the 45-year-old. Since 2010 Kennedy has gained an MBE, an advertising campaign and a clothing range for Marks & Spencer, the title of editor-at-large at LOVE magazine, and a daughter, Rainbow, now 18 months. While a successful clothing line, Lulu & Co, has been shelved momentarily, she’s still got a full to-do list – 90 per cent of which concerns Fashion East – to pack into a six-hour-day. “I live fve minutes from work so I go home and see Rainbow at lunchtime, then I’m back at 4pm,” she explains. “We’re madly in love.” The gooey grin when she talks about her daughter makes that clear. Brought up between Ibiza and Bristol, as one of four children, Kennedy’s own childhood was artistic. “As a kid I thought in pictures,” she says. “There wasn’t a telly in the house so my dad would be painting and we’d join in.” All of this – plus a period in the nineties spent living in Naples and putting on raves – fed into Fashion East, a project that Kennedy began when she was managing events at the Old Truman Brewery, a building off east London’s Brick Lane, around the millennium. “When we frst started,
Fashion East is London’s talent crèche. Here are four more to watch.
MARK LARGE/ANL/SIPA PRESS/PIXELFORMULA/REX SHUTTERSTOCK. NICK HARVEY/ANTONIO DE MORAES BARROS FILHO/WIREIMAGE/STEFAN ROUSSEAU/BEN STANSALL/ AFP/DAVE M. BENETT/LARRY BUSACCA/PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/FRENCH SELECT/GETTY. FAIRCHILD PHOTO SERVICE/CONDE NAST/CORBIS.
“I’M ALL ABOUT THE UNDERDOG, I GUESS. AT SCHOOL I USED TO LOOK AFTER THE KIDS WHO DIDN’T HAVE FRIENDS. IT’S SORT OF WHAT I DO NOW.” there wasn’t much uptake,” she remembers. “You’d talk to people and they’d be like, ‘Oh that’s a strange thing to do, why are you doing that?’” Using her powers of persuasion, however, fashion editors rarely seen outside W1 were soon turning up at warehouse spaces each season. According to Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, Kennedy “not only has a great eye but is also a great mentor, helping fedgling designers to express themselves with business in mind”. Henry Holland, the designer behind House of Holland, credits her as “the reason I have a career in fashion. The support that Lulu gives both fnancially and emotionally lasts so much longer than the two seasons.” This support is increasingly vital. In recent years, Fashion East designers have become more likely to be BA, rather than MA, graduates as higher education becomes increasingly expensive. “They’re coming out of college and saying ‘I’m going to start a label’,” she explains. “You have to admire the chutzpah but they may have unrealistic expectations and limited knowledge of what it takes.” They’ll be grateful for their baptism of fre, then. “I’m very old school,” says Kennedy of her methods. “I’ll phone you and be round your studio in a hour to see what the hell you’re up to.” The on-the-ground help that Kennedy provides takes myriad forms, she says, from “advice on manufacturing, sales strategy and pricing” to connecting designers with the support staff – stylists, photographers, DJs – needed to produce a fashion show. But, ultimately, it’s her ability to nurture these emerging talents that makes her unique – and valuable to fashion. “I’m all about the underdog, I guess,” she says. “At school I used to look after the kids who didn’t have friends. I had my little nursery in the playground. It’s sort of what I do now.” Indeed. Kennedy currently manages the nursery of London fashion and, as previous pupils will no doubt attest, she provides her charges with the best education around.
CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award Since 2002, the New York-based initiative has given more than $4m to young designers, including Alexander Wang and Proenza Schouler (pictured).
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LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers Set up in 2014 by the French fashion conglomerate, Thomas Tait and Fashion East alums Marques’Almeida (pictured) have won. With €300,000 and mentoring at stake, it’s a prize worth pursuing.
Fashion Hub Market A brand-new initiative at Milan Fashion Week 2015, the Fashion Hub Market sees 17 young designers exhibit their work. With names such as Stella Jean and Fausto Puglisi (pictured) coming up, Milan is making waves.
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Buro 24/7 Fashion Forward Initiative
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This Paris-based event showcases young Eastern European designers to editors at fashion week. Curated by Natalia Vodianova and Miroslava Duma (pictured, on right), there’s little doubt it will provide big career exposure. Models take to the runway in collections by Fashion East alumni (1) Henry Holland and (5) Craig Green. 2. Lulu & Co launches at Harvey Nichols, London, in 2010. 3. Fashion East founder Lulu Kennedy, after being made an MBE at a ceremony in Buckingham Palace in 2012, and with designers (6) Victoria Beckham, (7) Gareth Pugh and (8) Roksanda Ilincic. 4. The Fashion East s/s 2012 show at Haunch of Venison during London Fashion Week.
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Green Monday is the high-profle Asian initiative that has seen everyone from Hong Kong schoolchildren to pop stars endorse a lifestyle that means eating less meat. And the implications for our planet could be huge, says Michelle Zecha.
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Illustrations by VICKI TURNER
Sketches
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Clean Plates
hat are the most frightening issues that our planet is facing right now? There’s no doubt that they include global warming, climate change, and food insecurity. We, as a species, are facing a crisis of epic proportions.” David Yeung, co-founder and CEO of Green Monday, is perched on a stool in the sunlit cooking studio of Green Common, the plantbased, green-living emporium the group has just opened in Central, Hong Kong. “Green Monday is not just a meat-free or vegetarian movement, we are an organization, a social venture, that is actually built to combat these issues.” Named by Fast Company magazine as one of China’s top 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2014, Green Monday’s call to “Go Green!” by choosing vegetarian options one day a week or one meal a week is now a permanent part of more than 800 schools and 1,000 restaurants, and supported by the likes of Google, the US Consulate and Credit Suisse. Their campaigns featuring the singers Leo Ku and Vivian Chow and Olympic gold medallist Liu Xuan are highly visible across mass public transport, at the airport, in shopping malls and supermarkets, and spanning traditional and new media. “We wanted to create something simple, viral, actionable,” Yeung explains. “Our starting point is based on all the big problems that cause climate change, water shortage and food insecurity. There is one common, obvious culprit that no one talks about and that’s the food industry. In particular, the industrial meat industry.” 51 Baku.
“IF THIS BABY STEP IS MULTIPLIED BY SEVEN MILLION, SEVEN BILLION, THEN IT’S NOT A BABY STEP ANY MORE.” In its 2006 report, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations revealed that meat production emits more greenhouse gases than transportation or industry, accounting for up to 22 per cent of the world’s annual greenhouse gas production. Yeung and his co-founder Francis Ngai, both vegetarians and entrepreneurs in their own right, envisioned a multi-layered, multi-faceted approach for Green Monday to simultaneously promote green lifestyle choices, provide green solutions, and to invest in strategic green businesses. In seven years, Green Monday has begun to accomplish what the green movement the world over has been struggling to achieve – a positive and palpable behavioural shift. In a city that the US Department of Agriculture noted in 2008 had more meat eaters per capita than anywhere else in the world, today 23 per cent of Hong Kong’s population – 1.6 million people – are choosing vegetarian meals at least once a week, according to IPSOS, an independent research company. “Food engages everyone at the most basic level, and in an intense and dense city like Hong Kong, with the frenzy of social 52 Baku.
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1. Singers Leo Ku and Vivian Chow with children at a Go Green launch in 2013. 2. Indian curry with plant-based beef substitute. 3. The Green Common emporium in Hong Kong. 4. (left to right) Green Monday director Jenny Ng and co-founders David Yeung and Francis Ngai.
media, the idea of ‘Go Green!’ on Monday naturally goes viral,” says Yeung. “People have easily grasped that reducing their meat consumption one day a week or one meal per week, however much of a baby step that is, makes a difference. If this baby step is multiplied by seven million, seven billion, then it’s not a baby step any more.” Green Monday Solutions – the movement’s income-generating consulting arm – and Green Monday Ventures – which focuses on creating socially responsible and sustainable businesses – provide fnancial support so that the team can remain independent and maintain an unfettered commitment to their vision. The Ventures arm also enables Green Monday to actively build a green economy and to demonstrate that mindful businesses can turn a proft while doing good. Since Green Monday’s founding in 2008, no other organization in Hong Kong has promoted a plant-based lifestyle on the same breadth of scale as it has. Before Green Monday partnered with school caterers, no vegetarian options were offered in schools. Today, 42 per cent of the 600,000 schoolchildren in Hong Kong are choosing at least one vegetarian meal a week. Yeung is adamant, however, that Green Monday’s goal is not to convert everyone to vegetarianism. “The future of food is not going to be absolutely meatless. For companies adopting Green Monday, we insist that the menu still includes meat but we just change the ratio. So rather than 80 per cent meat, 20 per cent green, let’s do 50-50, or even better two thirds green, one third meat. This is the ‘co-exist model’. So for those who still need their burger or their steak, that’s fne, but what we’re trying to achieve is the massive, collective behavioural shift to save our planet and ourselves.” While we may not have reached the point of no return where nothing can hold off potentially catastrophic global warming, leading climatologists agree that we are almost out of time. Green Monday, as it gains in momentum, is taking great strides in trying to buy us some of that time back.
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Sketches
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Hip to be Square
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Donald Judd, the trailblazing godfather of minimalist design, inspired an aesthetic which a new furry of shows and designers confrms, says Mark C. O’Flaherty.
THIS PAGE: ELEONORA MION. DOUGLAS TUCK, 2009, COURTESY THE CHINATI FOUNDATION/MAURICIO ALEJO/SOL HASHEMI/JUDD FOUNDATION ARCHIVES © JUDD FOUNDATION LICENSED BY VAGA. SUZANNE DECHILLO/TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE. BOB ADELMAN/CORBIS.
1. e invented the loft lifestyle and, quite accidentally, created a design template that still looks fresh fve decades after he pioneered it. We may still be infatuated with the pop and bohemian milieu of artists like Warhol and Bacon, but no one created a more infuential and alluring setting in which to live and create their work than Donald Judd. Now, 21 years after his death, designers are still taking inspiration from his profoundly minimalist aesthetic, a trend that’s set to gear up a notch with a furry of anniversaries and exhibitions. Hot on the heels of the frst ever exhibition of his Cor-ten steel works at David Zwirner in New York at the end of 2015, 2016 sees the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Judd Foundation, while MoMA has just announced plans for the largest ever Judd retrospective – scheduled to open in New York in autumn 2017. The artist’s refective metal cubes and wall-mounted stack pieces fll landmark galleries worldwide. But while they break records at auction, it’s signifcant that what he created to surround himself and live with – a bold reaction against what he damned as “overstuffed bourgeois Victorian furniture” – is at least as iconic. The forthcoming MoMA show may be the blockbuster to end them all, but furniture inspired by Judd’s own private interiors has been big news at the Milan furniture fair Salone del Mobile for the last few years.
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1. Fifteen untitled works in concrete (1980–84) by Donald Judd at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas. 2 & 5. The Block, Judd’s former living and working space in Marfa. 3, 6, 7 & 8. The artist’s residence and studio at 101 Spring Street, New York City. 4. The artist at work in 1966.
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“Judd never set out to focus on commercial design,” says London-based furniture designer Philippe Malouin, whose SIMPLE collection embodies much of the ethos of American minimalist art of the 1950s and 1960s. “He was an artist who experimented with shape, composition and repetition in a very interesting manner, and the work subsequently lent itself it to some furniture pieces.” True, but such furniture. A tour around Judd’s private residence and studio at 101 Spring Street is one of the most inspiring things you can do in New York City. Likewise, a trip to his home and library in Marfa – the remote Texan town he colonized and repositioned culturally, and in which his friend Robert Irwin is currently fnishing a 1,000sq m installation that has taken 15 years to plan and $5m to realize – is revelatory. Judd, who wrote a seminal essay entitled ‘It’s Hard to Find a Good Lamp’, furnished his spaces with extraordinary restraint, with muscular and functional wooden and metal pieces with no ornamentation. His shelves were plain, bookended with panels to create second, sideways, outward-facing storage sections; his library chairs and stools were a pleasing exercise in geometry, taking the form of an outline of a simple cube, while his foor-level platform bed, with no headboard, is one of the most famous pieces of 20th-century design. Looking through the new designs being presented under the design brand Ligne Roset umbrella this 55 Baku.
year, you can trace a clear line back to Judd’s studios. Nathalie Dewez’s new Ellipse light is, she says “a tribute to Ellsworth Kelly, an artist from the same movement as Judd – I am very infuenced by the minimalist movement of the 1960s; Judd was a visionary, going straight to the point of objects, their shapes and materials.” Alice Rosignoli’s simple chimney-like terracotta pots would sit well within one of the rooms at The Block, Judd’s residence and studio in Marfa. “I discovered Judd before my design studies,” says Rosignoli. “The perfect balance between the simplicity and the elegance of shape in his creations are certainly in line with a modern aesthetic.” Similarly, the Soft Mag table by Frederic Ruyant – a linear coffee table with a soft magazine station at one end – looks like it could be a black-washed piece from Judd’s light-flled SoHo quarters. “He had a modern style which will not age,” says Ruyant. “It has rigour, economy of means, scale and proportion.” The Adams foor light by Studio Helka – made up essentially of two intersecting lines – has the lightness, modesty and beauty of much of Judd’s best work. You are unlikely to secure a Judd stack work for under $10m, but you can still buy Judd original designs for considerably less. The Judd Foundation accepts commissions for the pieces, still made to the artist’s strict specifcations: painted aluminium chairs take 12 weeks and cost $6,000–7,000 a piece. The iconic Judd Chair #84/5 starts at $1,800 in pine and goes up to $5,400 in selected hardwoods, such as cherry, maple or walnut, as used by Judd. Collectors include Sofa Coppola, Claes Oldenburg and gallerist Paula Cooper. “The furniture speaks for itself,” says Rainer Judd, co-president of the Judd Foundation. “We use the same fabricators that Judd used, although the wood pieces are now made in California and are more refned than the ‘rough’ pieces that were made by Celedonio ‘Chango’ Mediano and his brother Alfredo in Marfa.” “The force of Judd’s work was to master simplicity,” believes Philippe Malouin, whose SIMPLE slat tables are constructed from two-by-four timber lengths laid horizontally and arranged radially at each end to create legs. “It is something that is inherently extremely diffcult to achieve. When a function is considered, a ‘minimal’ design object should fulfl the function while reducing the amount of frivolity involved in the design.” Malouin’s Type Cast Chair is one of the most arresting pieces of furniture to debut in recent years. It’s effortlessly chic. The industrial simplicity would
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doubtless have caught Judd’s eye, even if he may have taken issue with its curved back. Three pencil-thin legs support the thinnest of seats with a similarly barely-there back support, all sandcast in aluminium or iron to deliberately leave construction and fnishing marks on the surface. Presented in basic black, it would act as a wonderful punctuation mark to, say, Judd’s Desk #74 in mahogany plywood, which is stark, but also rich with exciting, architectural lines. Philosophy aside, the look of Judd’s furniture stems in part from a restricted access to materials as well as functional necessity and a rejection of superfuous decoration. His old SoHo building may be full of priceless Dan Flavin light sculptures, but you won’t fnd a gram of plastic. And in Marfa, building supplies were in short supply around the old military base that he wanted to turn into a permanent exhibition site in the form of the Chinati Foundation. “He used what was available,” says Robert Arber, a master printmaker who lives and works in Marfa. “He didn’t get some exotic African lumber. He found pine that came in long boards that dictated what was possible with the furniture. He was practical.”
ELEONORA MION. EVA FELDKAMP. LUCA PIFFARETTI.
“HE DIDN’T GET SOME EXOTIC AFRICAN LUMBER. HE FOUND PINE. HE WAS PRACTICAL.”
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8. Arber relocated from the north on the invitation of Judd himself, to tend to the artist’s own prints, and lives and works in what was once a movie theatre, with his artist wife Valerie. Like Judd, Arber created a vast table in the middle of their live/work space from readily available materials. It’s practical for two artists to lay sizeable paper works upon, but also perfect for the biggest imaginable dinner party. “When Judd came here, he needed furniture,” says Arber. “He was living somewhere where you couldn’t just go out and buy something.” The self-effacing style of Judd continues to be something that modernists, as much as minimalists, cherish. Strip your environment back to its bare bones, using materials and forms that have integrity, and you can really see what’s beautiful and important. When artists Maryam Amiryani and Nick Terry bought a classic adobe house in Marfa, they created sets of Judd-style bookshelves. “But it’s not about copying,” says Amiryani. “It’s more about creating an ideal, as artists, to live close to nature. I lived very simply in New York
City, and I don’t feel I have made such a huge stylistic change.” The site-specifc grandeur of Judd’s actual art has also inspired designers and architects. What could be more pleasing to gaze at than one of the hundreds of giant aluminium refective cubes that Judd created? They blurred the boundaries of art and design decades before it was fashionable, or acceptable, to discuss the two in the same breath. When the architectural practice Space Group put together a London home interior for clients with a substantial collection of 1960s furniture design classics recently, they explored forms from the period to shape the interior. One of the most striking results from their research came in the form of a dazzling, giant copper box, which serves as a kitchen island and work surface. “It’s the visual heart of the entire foor,” says architect Martin Gruenanger. “In German there is a wonderful word, gesamtkunstwerk, which translates as ‘comprehensive artwork’. It’s a holistic work of art that makes use of many art forms in order to achieve an ideal end result. To achieve it you can’t stop with just the building, you have to consider everything inside it. “And it’s here that Judd is so important. His art is a transition between architecture, interiors and art itself. Judd’s work offers references for timeless, modern solutions.”
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1 & 5. Alice Rosignoli and her Toits de Paris terracotta pots for Ligne Roset. 2, 3 & 4. Nathalie Dewez and her new Ellipse light. Designs by (10) Philippe Malouin include (background image & 7) MDF wall pieces, (8) functional MDF shapes, (9) Type Cast Chair and (11 & 12) slat table. Designs by (6) Frederic Ruyant include (13) his Adamas floor light and (14) Soft Mag table, both for Ligne Roset. 15. JJ House project by Space Group.
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Portrait by UWE DITZ
Sketches
Mathematician Messoud Efendiyev is changing how we all think. When he’s not watching football, that is, as Michael Brooks discovers.
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Serious Play
ooking closely at Messoud Efendiyev’s favourite chair, I can see the leather has a small but noticeable area of wear at the end of each arm. A few minutes into our conversation, I understand why. Efendiyev, an Azerbaijanborn professor of mathematics at the University of Stuttgart, is a man who gets involved with life. Whenever he gets worked up or excited about something, he sits bolt upright, eyes shining through his spectacles. His hands channel his passion and grip the armchair with palpable energy. Hence the wear. That passion might be for anything: bacteriaflled soil, the usefulness of mathematical equations, the patterns of tumour growth, the joy of working with young, enthusiastic students. Often, though, it’s football. This is where he sits to watch his favourite team, Manchester United. It’s easy to imagine that the chair has suffered a great deal during their recent tribulations. If things don’t pick up for Rooney’s crew, that chair might need reupholstering before next season. We are sitting with a tray of delicacies between us. Perhaps most delicious are the Azerbaijani sweets. Every time Efendiyev comes back from his homeland – he remains an Azerbaijani citizen even after 25 years living in Germany, and returns frequently – he makes sure to bring some back with him. He asks if I have ever visited Azerbaijan, and looks at me with astonishment when I tell him I haven’t. “You have
Messoud Efendiyev at work in Stuttgart.
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science similarly has no defned nationality. “It’s a beautiful thing: what we are learning has benefts for mankind everywhere, and breaks down borders.” Small wonder his living room is a haven of wooden furniture, populated by a litter of curios and artefacts – from Japan, Azerbaijan, Germany, Morocco and anywhere else his mathematical journeys have taken him. Just as nomadic is Efendiyev’s approach to research. “You have to change your interests at least every decade,” he says. He doesn’t even stick to mathematics all the time; recently, for instance, he contributed to a symposium on the German writer and artist Hermann Hesse. But he is now probably best known for throwing himself into biology – and pulling new mathematics out of it. He sits upright again as he shows me the book that demonstrates the value of sampling new felds. It is called Evolution Equations Arising in the Modelling of Life Sciences and published by the prestigious Birkhäuser imprint of Springer. Its contents are largely unintelligible to almost everyone on the planet. But its pages
taken him to all the corners of the Earth. “I feel at home everywhere; I am a citizen of the world,” he says. He travels often, and speaks seven languages (given the tiniest of encouragements, he hits me with an impressive display of his Japanese). Efendiyev was born in Zaqatala, and his hometown population – a mix of Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Germans, Romanians, Russians and British descendants – made him unafraid of crossing cultural barriers. “It was a very interesting multiethnic community: it’s not surprising I can easily make contact with people, wherever they are from,” he says. In his view,
“YOU SHOULD BE LIKE A CHILD. YOU SHOULD BE EAGER TO LEARN – AND THE MORE YOU LEARN, THE MORE YOU REALIZE HOW LITTLE YOU KNOW.”
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demonstrate mathematical discoveries that Efendiyev made as a result of his collaborations with biomedical researchers - an achievement that makes him especially proud. “For the frst six months, we didn’t understand each other at all,” he says. “Now we have learned each others’ languages, and opened up new directions for both biology and mathematics.” It started 10 years ago, when a biologist from the Helmholtz Centre in Munich asked him if it was possible to solve a particular set of monster equations. “My frst reaction was ‘why?’,” Efendiyev says. The answer – to understand the language spoken by bacteria – was strange enough to pull him in. “As soon as I heard that, I thought, ‘Oh, this is a whole new branch of science’.”
He was soon on a train to Munich, and has shared his time between there and his home institute in Stuttgart ever since. To understand exactly what it is Efendiyev brings to biology, you’d have to be able to parse the differential equations that are his speciality. But a favour of his contribution is not beyond mere mathematical mortals. Take the work on bacterial bioflms, for example. Bacteria do not sit idly by while we try to exterminate them. They work together to defeat us. Part of their fghtback is to fow together in ways that maximize their resistance, and to understand that fow involves fnding solutions to differential equations that describe collective bacterial motion. Then there’s the extraordinary discovery of ‘quorum sensing’: in swarms, bacteria send chemical messages to each other that serve to optimize their chances of survival. Those messages fow in ways that are also described by differential equations. Working with Efendiyev, biologists are starting to get to grips with quorum sensing, and exploring ways to defeat the bacteria. The same skills are enabling him to help biologists understand tumour growth, and even issues of agriculture, where soil, nutrients and bacteria must be allowed to exist in delicate balance. From the way Efendiyev talks, it’s clear he feels like a child who has stumbled across an exciting new adventure playground. Indeed, his colleagues have referred to him as “childlike” in his enthusiasm, and it is a label he wears with pride. “You should be like a child,” he says. “You should be eager to learn – and the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.” It might all have turned out so differently. Efendiyev’s parents were both teachers. “My father subscribed to the journal Mathematics in School, which I enjoyed reading, but I never thought I would end up a mathematician.” By the age of 13, he was an accomplished footballer and was selected for the Azerbaijan under-16 team. Eventually, though, his passion for mathematics began to take over. He won a series of high school Olympiads, and mathematics fnally ousted football from his professional aspirations. Not that he has ever given up the beautiful game – at 62, he still plays every week with some of his fellow professors. And he doesn’t plan on stopping any of these activities any time soon. He still gets compliments on the football pitch, and he is widely respected as an enthusiastic and engaged leader in the mathematics and biology communities all over the world. His colleagues have even given his unique approach a name: the Efendiyev System of Unite and Conquer Friendship Based Collaboration. Efendiyev is happy and fulflled in his work and life in what he calls his “adopted home” in Stuttgart, he says. Not that life is completely free of anxiety. There are the twists and turns of the English Premier League to worry about. And, of course, the state of that chair – though it’s probably only a small job for a skilled upholsterer. If only someone could fx Manchester United so easily.
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ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL FARRINGTON.
to go!” he cries, pulling himself upright in the chair. The leather is suffering under the pressure of his fngers again. “It’s so beautiful, and the people are just wonderful. Their hospitality is always exemplary.” As if to prove his point, Efendiyev’s wife Tamilla, a celebrated piano teacher, enters the room, greeting me warmly and setting a perfect espresso down on the table. Azerbaijan has changed since Efendiyev last lived there: it’s now a different place from the Soviet-dominated country he left in 1990 when he won a prestigious Humboldt Fellowship to work in Germany. Since then, his career has
Winter Issue
WENDY BEVAN. RICHARD HAUGHTON.
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A cooling breeze 809-4 Beyond Trastevere Quick break in Cartagena Chalk circle? Break to Bond
Lace made with neoprene? A ball gown that sports a racer-back corset? If anyone can show fashionistas of the Big Apple how to mix it up, it’s the new-in-town creative director of Oscar de la Renta, Peter Copping. Words by HARRIET QUICK Illustrations by SUSIE HOGARTH
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rom Peter Copping’s offce on 42nd Street you are rewarded with a bird’s-eye view of the activities in Bryant Park, where a green octagonal lawn (rare in Manhattan) is fanked by the handsome turn-of-thecentury New York City library and a quadrangle of plane trees. “It’s rather nice – there are free yoga lessons in the park on summer evenings,” says Copping of the setting that has witnessed numerous showbiz productions, including Ghostbusters and Sex and the City. However, as there is a light drizzle in the air, one might not feel the calling for barefoot vinyasas tonight. Or indeed any night for Peter in the lead-up to the September show. As the new creative director of the vivaciously glamorous red carpet fashion house Oscar de la Renta, the schedule is intense and there is little respite. The New York business, unlike Paris, does not close up shop for August – it glides onwards at speed. “I do kind of miss the long holiday,” says Copping, who spent the best part of two decades in Paris, working as womenswear director at Louis Vuitton for 12 years before joining Nina Ricci as creative director. There, over a period of fve years, he successfully revived the maison, positioning it as the shining star of gracious, cultured, modern femininity. It was Copping’s vision at Ricci that initially attracted
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Oscar de la Renta. They share an aesthetic that embraces a deliciously pretty picture of a woman that is reinforced by a mastery of pattern, silhouette, embellishment, exceptional fabrics and delightful colourways. Copping excels at the satisfying minutiae of detail – hand-frayed edges, tiny covered buttons, frippery and lace – as well as a masterful control of firtatious volume and proportion. How and when to draw out volume, cut a neckline or balance a shoulder line is the difference between the extraordinary and the banal, and between millions of dollars of sales and a ‘trudge along’ designer.
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The self-effacing Copping, who was trained at Central St Martins and the Royal College of Art, looks at ease in his chinos and brogues and very much in command. There is so much to do but, realistically, Copping is giving himself the time to do it. Evolution, in fashion as in nature, cannot be forced. Oscar de la Renta was keen to ensure the legacy of the company he had built from scratch – unlike many of his peers such as Geoffrey Beene and Bill Blass, who died without succession plans. “Mr de la Renta wanted to fnd someone to take the house forward and at the time he was working with the stylist Alex White, who I also worked with 66 Baku.
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1. The Nina Ricci s/s 2013 show, Paris Fashion Week. 2. The Nina Ricci a/w 2010 show, Paris. 3, 4 & 6. The Oscar de la Renta s/s 2016 show, New York. 5. Peter Copping, and the designer with (7) Carolyn Murphy, (13) Rambert Rigaud, (14) Iman and Grayson Perry. 8. Oscar de la Renta and Nancy Kissinger, 1987. 9. Met Ball gowns designed by Copping worn by Wendi Deng, 2015, and (11) Sarah Jessica Parker, 2014. 10. Oscar de la Renta and Anna Wintour, New York. 12. (left to right) Anna Wintour, Diane von Furstenberg, Oscar de la Renta and Sarah Jessica Parker.
at Nina Ricci,” recalls Copping. “Through that mutual contact, it brought Nina Ricci to his attention. I know that whenever he was out and saw people wearing Ricci, he clocked it and liked it and saw how it related to his vision. For me,” adds Copping, “having been at Ricci for fve years and in Paris for 20, the situation seemed good and I think it is nice to change.” De la Renta’s death at the age of 82 in October 2014 followed shortly after Copping had accepted the position – just days, in fact, after the announcement had been made. De la Renta relished his time in Paris, too, and learnt his craft during the heyday of haute couture in the 1950s. The dashing Dominican with impeccable manners and great dancing skills had worked at Lanvin and Balenciaga before setting up his own house in New
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York in the mid-1960s. He was to become the toast of American high society. Over the decades, his gala dresses and ladies-who-lunch suits have equipped generations of women with lighthearted confdence and a generous expression of opulence, status and charm. Oscar de la Renta’s nimble, highly polished shoes have fox-trotted and tangoed with moguls, frst ladies, great philanthropists, intellectuals and society ladies. Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, Nancy Kissinger, Nan Kempner, Sarah Jessica Parker and Anna Wintour were among the glittering roll call of friends and devotees. In turn, de la Renta became a star, too. But the glittering halo of the past can be in stark contrast to the present. Copping entered a small, tightly run company (headed up by CEO Alex Bolen, de la Renta’s son-in-law) during a period of mourning. Copping and his partner, designer-turned-forist Rambert Rigaud, packed up and sold their apartment in Paris, shipped over a container including more than 100 crates of books, antiques, paintings and effects, and the designer dutifully got on with his work creating his frst catwalk collection for the autumn/winter 2015 runway season. “You just get
13. on with it and don’t worry too much,” says Copping, despite inheriting a tiny studio team and short deadlines. “When I arrived, there were just two designers. They both decided to leave after the frst show as they had started their own line. It’s only now the team has come together,” he adds, in a voice as soft as his cashmere sweater. His right hand is Andrea Ruiz, who had previously worked at Prada and Tom Ford, and together they work with the team on two runway collections, resort and pre collections, as well as a bridal line. The Bryant Park HQ retains a Parisian atelier feel, and a high level of artisanship is palpable in the clothes. In this era of paint-by-numbers trends, an instinctive, highly crafted effortlessness is what sets the leaders apart. Copping’s debut collection, staged as normal at Bryant Park, shows a subtle recalibration of the codes. There are the grand gala dresses but also a bigger focus on separates and daywear. Whereas historically the collection would have ended with the most fantastical ball 14.
gown, Copping closed the show with a short, strapless fuchsia cocktail dress with giant découpe rosettes. “I like to mix things up in that way – the procession from daywear to cocktail to evening just seems staid,” he says. Up close, you can see the subtle realignment. A dress 67 Baku.
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question of making things more relaxed but offering alternatives that could be acceptable. That is exciting as it gives you scope,” he adds. New jewellery collections (imagine singledrop earrings that reach to the collarbone) and beachwear are also in the offng. “There are lots of different women to cater to and many fantastic-looking women who work hard to achieve that and they want to show it off,” he explains. As such, some of his grand gala ball gowns boast racerback corsets. Uptown, in the beige and travertine stone interior of the Madison Avenue fagship (one of 14 stores including one in Mount Street in London, another in Punta Cana – where de la Renta kept two homes – and numerous concessions), customers are thrilled to see change. Floral, brushstrokedecorated founce silk dresses firt on the rails alongside an emerald green suede skirt with geometric leather stripes 68 Baku.
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“HERE, WOMEN WEAR WHAT IS ‘APPROPRIATE’. I WOULD LIKE TO BREAK DOWN SOME OF THOSE CODES AND BOUNDARIES. IT IS A QUESTION OF OFFERING ALTERNATIVES.” 5.
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near a fabulous bohemian trophy coat. A regular by the name of Elizabeth with baguette-thin legs and of an indeterminable age darts between the rails, keen to get frst dibs on new deliveries. “This is darling!” she says appreciatively. The brand also runs an e-commerce site (generating $5.5m in 2014, according to the Financial Times), a witty social media character @oscarprgirl, alongside perfume (the latest scent Extraordinary was released in March) and childrenswear. Like de la Renta, 48-year-old Copping is a brilliant dancer but by nature he favours one-to-one interactions rather than the spotlight. “Oscar de la Renta was such a big personality,” he refects. “He moved in a lot of circles; political, high society, cultural. Coming from the UK, I don’t want to move into the American political circle. It would feel alien to me. But in a way Oscar, being the way he was, allows me to do things my way. At trunk shows and events I can sit down and have a good conversation with guests on different subjects,” says Copping of the way he will forge bonds. He has already dressed Wendi Deng and the CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer for the Met Ball, and there will be many more faces at the house including Sienna Miller and Kate Moss. “If it comes up, of course I would jump at the chance to dress the First Lady,” he adds. Emma Elwick Bates, fashion news editor of American Vogue and a fellow expat in New York, comments, “Peter’s portrait of the Oscar de la Renta woman brings a fresh-faced fortitude to the uptown dream. He injects modernity into the classic evening ideas and verve to daywear.” Copping is deeply versed in the history and aesthetics of fashion as well as fne art, music, literature and the 8.
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decorative arts. His antennae are fnely attuned to the nuances of gesture and colour. He can critique and make sense of a 17th-century portrait painting with the same alacrity as he can a modern-day street scene. It is this sensitivity that makes his designs rich with storytelling power. Copping is someone who needs culture and history around him. His West Village brownstone apartment includes numerous items that Rigaud and he have truffed out at auctions and rural fairs. The ambience is refned without being uptight, with objets d’arts and warmly lit corners to delight the eye. A Regency console sits happily with a marble-topped 20th-century table alongside Georgian dining chairs, Chinese porcelain and rustic clay pots. “It all ftted in pretty nicely. I have to say we are enjoying it. The West Village offers a certain element of protection – it feels small and contained in that respect,” says Copping of his new home. There is also a 15th-century manor house in Normandy that Rigaud and Copping have beautifully restored to become a romantic entertaining spot as well as a private retreat. Come next season, it might also offer the ideal spot for some moonlit dancing. For autumn/winter, Copping looked to the portrait paintings of the late 19th-century Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla and the culture of bullfghting. Dropped-waist gowns were topped with grosgrain bows; carnations adorned swathed skirts; while Alençon lace made the prettiest of sundresses worn with jet embroidered espadrilles. These pieces are perfectly poised, just like Copping, for some high kicks and slow swoons on dancefoors around the world.
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in chrome yellow is in fact embellished with laser-cut neoprene ‘lace’, while a taffeta evening topper is revved up in the shape of a zippered bomber jacket. Anna Wintour, a long-time friend and fan of Oscar de la Renta, has devoted time and advice. “At one point, I thought it would be easier to get her a desk in the studio,” jests Copping. “She has been fantastic, a huge supporter and very generous.” The nuances and etiquette of American society take a while to read and appreciate. “That French women are chic and incredibly well dressed is a truism, but there are many different ways of dressing,” says Copping. “French women look like they are dressing for themselves. Inès de la Fressange has a uniform that looks effortless and Carine Roitfeld dresses in a way that is authentic to her. Here, women dress for events and wear what is ‘appropriate’. I would like to break down some of those codes and boundaries. It’s not a
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1, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 9. The Oscar de la Renta s/s 2016 show, New York Fashion Week. 2, 3 & 8. The Oscar de la Renta a/w 2015 show, New York Fashion Week.
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Mexico City The Inside Track
MEXICO CITY: With a slew of wealthy collectors, world-famous museums and established and independent galleries, Mexico City has emerged as an infuential art centre both within the region and beyond. In the winter several art fairs – from the established Zona Maco to the indie Material and Salón Acme – showcase both the best of local art and respected international names. Now famous Mexican artists such as Gabriel Orozco are being joined in the spotlight by a young generation of hypertalented artists whose work and reach are increasingly international, such as installation artists Jose Dávila and Martin Soto Climent, sculptor Pia Camil and ceramicist Milena Muzquiz. 70 Baku.
Bogotå At the heart of the booming Latin American art market, two cities emerge from violenceridden pasts with vibrant museums, galleries, fairs and DIY spaces creating a new wave of inspiration – and spending. Shirine Saad reports. 71 Baku.
They draw from their country’s rich and complex history, and from visual traditions ancient and modern, to question the reality of contemporary Mexico – between corruption, violence, a wealth boom and sweeping creativity. “Mexico is now known as the new Berlin,” explains independent curator Rodrigo Campuzano. “New galleries are bringing new blood to what had begun to seem like a stale scene, and older galleries like OMR and Hilario Galguera are relocating to new spaces or launching side projects focusing on more experimental projects. Artist-run spaces are also growing in number throughout the city.” Zélika García, the founder of the fair Zona Maco, says the city is at a turning point in the emerging Central and South American art network, both on the market and creativity sides. “[The art scene in] Latin America has grown exponentially in recent years,” she says. “This is refected in the rise of galleries and art fairs in different countries, along with a strong demand and a growing collector base.”
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BOGOTA: After six turbulent decades, Columbia is enjoying a moment of stability and economic and cultural prosperity, leading to rising interest from foreign investors and travellers. The country’s rich art scene, which had previously remained semiunderground and relatively unknown outside the region, has become the new buzz in the art world. “There were several generations of skilled artists here, but they were unknown because of the violence associated with the country,” explains curator José Roca, who formerly worked at Tate and is now the artistic director of FLORA art centre in Bogotá. In 2014 the city was chosen as a rising art capital by Phaidon in its volume Art Cities of the Future. Now, with major collectors and gallerists focking to the city for Artbo, Bogotá’s important art fair, it is a focal point in the Latin American art scene. “Every single important curator has just come to Artbo,” explains Colombian gallerist Leon Tovar, who has just opened a gallery in New York. “What is happening in Colombia is unbelievable. Even international galleries are opening here, which is a sign that the market is getting better.” Indeed, this year’s edition of Artbo welcomed 84 galleries from 33 different countries, explains Maria Paz Gaviria, who founded the fair 11 years ago with the support of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. And while the artists of the Escobar era reacted vividly to their political reality – such as Doris Salcedo, Oscar Muñoz, José Alejandro Restrepo and Miguel Angel Rojas – artists of the new generation prefer to distance themselves from local politics. These artists, who received rigorous training at the country’s art schools, are now tackling universal or intimate questions, and experimenting with new media. “Nowadays there’s a transpolitical message,” explains Gaviria, “a globalized language.”
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MEXICO CITY: The city’s art scene has fast diversifed and developed, both at the bluechip and DIY, underground levels. Carlos Slim, the telecommunications magnate who inaugurated the Soumaya Museum in posh Polanco with high-profle local architect Fernando Romero, and juice heir Eugenio Lopez, who opened the adjacent Fundación Jumex, are known for their massive collections. Other infuential art insiders are Zélika García, the founder of Zona Maco, and Homero Fernandez of the alternative fair Salón Acme. “Education through art is an emerging trend,” explains Rodrigo Campuzano, “with new projects such as La Herrateca, an artistrun workshop that allows visitors to use several kinds of specialized tools for production free of charge, and Aeromoto, a public library holding a huge collection of art books. Another public project is Alumnos 47’s mobile library, which travels around rural communities.” The art centre SOMA has also become a reference within the art scene in Mexico City. Their SOMA Wednesdays feature artists, critics and curators and the centre is known for educating aspiring artists and showcasing emerging talents through its summer programmes and exhibition initiatives.
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Previous spread: An aerial view of Mexico City, and a street in Bogotá. This spread: 1. La DS (1993) by Gabriel Orozco. 2. OMR Gallery, Mexico City. 3. Hilario Galguera. 4. Big Apple Care (2013) by Fidia Falaschetti. 5. Zona Maco, Mexico City. 6. Serie Faenza: Antropofagia (1979) by Miguel Angel Rojas. 7. Artbo, Bogotá, 2015. 8. FLORA art centre, Bogotá. 9. Doris Salcedo. 10. Salón Acme, Mexico City. 11. Musa Paradisiaca (1997) by José Alejandro Restrepo. 12. The Soumaya Museum, Mexico City. 13. SOMA Summer, Mexico City, 2014. 14. Situ Estacionario (2014) by Anamaya Farthing-Kohl.
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Artist-run spaces are presenting more ambitious exhibitions such as Lucas Arruda’s ‘Deserto-Modelo’ exhibition in artist Martin Soto Climent’s Lulu project space. Also presenting fresh exhibitions is Lodos in San Rafael, run by one of the most notable emerging artists in the city, Francisco CorderoOceguera. Other noteworthy similar spaces are Casa Maauad, also in the San Rafael region, and Bikini Wax, owned by Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba, Ramón Izaguirre, Rodrigo García and Cristóbal García.
BOGOTA: The art scene isn’t limited to Bogotá, home to institutions such as the Museo de Arte Universidad Nacional, NC-arte, Espacio El Dorado and FLORA. There is also artist Oscar Muñoz’s independent space, Lugar a Dudas, in Cali, and the Medellin Modern Art Museum (MAMM). The new generation of artists to watch has taken on a wide range of media and themes. “Between 1995 and 2004 the aesthetics of violence dominated the art scene,” explains Roca, “whether it was political violence or drug issues. But after 2005 we decreased in the intensity of the confict. Now covering broader issues – travel, knowledge, education – art is engaged but in a different way. This is a very intense country and society we live in.” Names to note include Nicolás Paris, Mateo López, Delcy Morelos, María José Arjona, Alberto Baraya and Gabriel Sierra.
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Dates for Your Diary MEXICO CITY: Go in February, for Zona Maco, Material and Salón Acme art fairs. BOGOTA: October, when Artbo is on, is the best time to explore the city’s art scene.
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After Dark MEXICO CITY: For an afterfair dinner, the most elegant restaurant in town, Rosetta, serves upscale Italian dishes to designer-clad patrons in a lavish old mansion. For seafood, Contramar is the highend spot for raw fsh tacos, ceviches and creative takes on seafood classics. As for the serious gastronomes, they will book a table well in advance at Pujol, Enrique Olvera’s temple to avant-garde Mexican classics such as a 600-dayaged mole, grasshopper salsa and powdered ants. The best cocktails in town are to be had at Puebla 109. For dancing after midnight one must get the code (ask a local) to enter the glitzy MN Roy club, named after the Indian revolutionary, a dark wooden cave where international DJs and local stars mingle over champagne and cigarettes.
Don’t Say… MEXICO CITY: “Let’s go to Condesa.” Once favoured by fashion editors and gallerists, this is no longer the cool neighbourhood – it has become too pretty and too gentrifed. The interesting artists hang out in the gritty Centro instead. BOGOTA: Be mindful when mentioning the civil war and Escobar, as these are very painful subjects for Colombians.
Do Say… MEXICO CITY: That you’re planning to explore the beaches, mezcal producers, art scene and cuisine of Oaxaca, a more authentic vacation spot than, say, Cancun. BOGOTA: Ask to tour the city’s streets to uncover the worldfamous graffti art splattered on the walls of bohemian neighbourhood La Candelaria.
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BOGOTA: For dinner, art insiders head to Juana la Loca for delicious seafood served in a buzzing atmosphere. For more intimate conversations, Cacio y Pepe serves Italian classics and hearty wines in an elegant, low-lit setting. El Coq is where scenesters head for late-night aguardiente, disco and dancing around a tree with the young and hip.
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1. Deserto (2014) by Lucas Arruda. 2 & 4. Bikini Wax, Mexico City. 3. Francisco Cordero-Oceguera, Lodos Gallery, Mexico City. 5 & 6. Theo Mercier at Casa Maauad, Mexico City. 7. La Fabula de los Pajaros (2011) by Alberto Baraya. 8. The Las Aguas Environmental Axis, Bogotá. 9. María José Arjona takes part in an endurance performance at Center 548, New York, 2011. 10. Organized Salt Water (2007–14) by Delcy Morelos. 11. Artbo, Bogotá, 2015. 12. Rosetta, Mexico City. 13. Contramar, Mexico City. 14. Calle de Moneda, Mexico City. 15. Banco de Republica, Bogotá. 16. Pujol restaurant, Mexico City. 17 & 19. La Candelaria, Bogotá. 18. The Mezcal Fair, Mexico City, 2014. 20. Zona Maco, Mexico City. 21. Beach at Oaxaca, Mexico.
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rik Bulatov arrives with his wife Natasha and their interpreter to fnish the hang of his latest exhibition of paintings at a grand building in Mayfair in central London. I am meeting Bulatov, now 82, on the eve of the frst and – many would say – long overdue exhibition of his work in the capital since his show at the ICA in 1989. His slight fgure is in sharp contrast to his strong gaze and considerable energy, and he is keen to talk about his work. The new show, titled ‘BOT’ (pronounced vot and meaning, approximately, voilà), includes paintings and drawings dating from the 1970s right up to his most recent work made in 2015. Bulatov may be known as a slow and considered painter, but he has nevertheless produced a considerable oeuvre over his long career so far. His breakthrough, which established his reputation and his particular style early on, was his painting Horizon (1971– 72) in which the illusion of a naturally rendered beach scene is dramatically disrupted by a wide horizontal band of red and gold crossing the painting and obscuring the horizon. From that point on, nearly all of his work has similarly played with ideas of depth and surface. His characteristic compositions comprise a painted landscape over which are superimposed stylized letterforms or slogans reminiscent of early Russian avant-garde poster design and Soviet propaganda. Since the visibility and availability of
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Words by ANDREW LINDESAY Photography by ANDREW WOFFINDEN
his paintings has expanded in the West following Perestroika in the 1980s, it has become clear that Bulatov is an artist of international importance, alongside contemporaries of his such as Oleg Vassiliev and Ilya Kabakov. He has fnally been recognized as one of Russia’s leading artists to have lived and worked under the Soviet regime and to have emerged in its aftermath. This latest showing in London of Bulatov’s work was curated by the art auctioneer, and Baku magazine’s editor-atlarge, Simon de Pury and his wife Michaela, who together run the art consultancy de Pury de Pury, and presented by Kasia Kulczyk, the collector, benefactor and promoter of East European artists. Together they have begun a programme of exhibitions at a handsome 18th-century, Grade 1-listed building in Grafton Street in London’s Mayfair. As we sit among the works newly hung on the walls, or waiting to be placed, and with the lighting being installed, Simon de Pury, Bulatov with his interpreter (Bulatov does not speak English), and I talk about how the exhibition came about and about their long-standing friendship. “It might have been 1986 or maybe 1987 when I frst saw paintings by Erik Bulatov,” de Pury recalls. “It was in the Swiss home of my friend Paul Jolles, who at the time was the chairman of Nestlé. He travelled a great deal and wherever he was in the world he would always make time to visit artists’ studios. So if he was in New York he would visit Jasper Johns, who was a friend of his, and if in Moscow he would go and visit the studios of Bulatov, Vassiliev and Kabakov. I was working at Sotheby’s at that time and came up with the idea of an auction devoted to Russian contemporary art. I made a wish list of the artists I wanted to include, and negotiated through the Ministry of Culture. Most of my wishes on the list were granted except Erik Bulatov. I asked several times, saying that we would love to have his work in the exhibition, but they said that they
MICHAEL BRZEZINSKI. PHILIPPE MIGEAT. JEAN-LOUIS LOSI.
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For Russian artist Erik Bulatov, a painter of conceptual images, simplicity and graphics still have the power to unsettle.
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had no works available, which was a big disappointment. The auction went ahead with some very exciting works but sadly with nothing by Erik. “Some years later I saw the great retrospective of Erik’s work at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 2006. It reinforced my conviction that he is a major fgure whose work, while quintessentially Russian, holds up with the best international artists. “As for this show, a key person in all this is Kasia Kulczyk. We mentioned to Kasia that we wanted to do an exhibition of Erik Bulatov, whose work she knows, and her enthusiasm and support made it all possible.”
With this personal history established, I turn to Bulatov to ask him about his life in Paris, where he and Natasha have been spending much of their time since 1991. Has he left Moscow for good? “I still have my Russian passport and I have an apartment and a studio there,” he replies. “My frst exhibition was in Zurich. It travelled around Europe and the United States, and for the frst time in my life I got a chance to earn my living with my professional artwork. Before that I was making my living by illustrating children’s books. Of course, the most important part of my life was my painting rather than book illustration. Natasha and I accepted the offer of galleries to work with them, and eventually, in 1989, we went to New York – but to work, not to leave Russia forever. We never thought of ourselves as émigrés. Everything was good there, and my works sold quite well.” What contact had he with American artists in New York? “I was greatly infuenced 78 Baku.
Previous spread: (left, from top) D’où Je Sais Où? (2009); Here (2001), oil on canvas; and in pencil on paper; O (2008); and BBpex-BHU3 (2011). Main picture: the artist. This page: Le Petit Pont (2015); Bulatov at his 2015 London show. Opposite: (left) A Bridge in Savvinskaya Sloboda (1884) by Isaac Levitan; (far right) Bulatov with his wife Natasha; (centre, from top) BBpex-BHU3 (2011); La France (1993); Rouge A Levres (1994); La Grange en Normándie (2011); and La plage (1997).
MICHAEL BRZEZINSKI. TRETYAKOV GALLERY, MOSCOW/RIA NOVOSTI/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES.
by American Pop art and American art in general was always something I was drawn to. The concept of Pop art was very close to what I was trying to achieve in my work. I can’t say there was a particular artist who infuenced me more than anybody else, but my work is often compared to that of the American artist Ed Ruscha, who I like a lot. Indeed, I think that he is the only American artist I feel a close affnity to. But unfortunately I came to know him and his works quite late in my life, when I was already quite formed as an artist.” Bulatov continues: “We were in New York for a year and a half but it was hard for Natasha. When I had an exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the French Minister of Culture offered us a studio there for a year. We accepted readily and I continued my contract work with a US gallery. And when we found ourselves in
“FOR YEARS I HAVE BEEN DREAMING OF DOING A SIMPLE LANDSCAPE WITH A BRIDGE – FOR ME, A QUINTESSENTIAL IMAGE OF RUSSIA. EVENTUALLY, THIS YEAR, I DID IT. IT’S HARD TO PLUCK UP THE COURAGE TO DO JUST A SIMPLE LANDSCAPE.” Paris, Natasha said, ‘This is it, I am not leaving’. So we bought a fat there in 1991.” Bulatov is known to paint slowly, so I ask him about his methods. “It is not so much the painting [that takes the time] as the spatial composition, choosing how the work is going to be structured,” Bulatov explains. “I have a very clear image in my head, but once I am trying to materialize it, it’s not really what I had in mind. I have to fnd the physical expression of that mental image. Sometimes it comes to me quite quickly, sometimes it takes a long time. But as soon as I see it, I know that this is it.” So much of Bulatov’s work includes landscape but it is nearly always disrupted by slogans or other text and devices. These serve to remind the viewer of the inherent artifciality of the painted illusion of depth. But I am curious to know, in the light of Bulatov’s love of the Old Masters and pre-20th-century art, if he has ever painted straightforward, naturalistic landscapes. And, in fact, just such a work is a last-minute and unexpected addition to the exhibition in which we are seated, a beautiful landscape called Le Petit Pont. Bulatov explains its origin: “When I was still a child and then a student at art school, my favourite painting was a relatively small work by the 19th-century artist Isaac Levitan of a very simple wooden bridge in the
Russian countryside. I always thought that there could never be anything as beautiful as that. And even now, whenever I visit the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, I always look for that painting and it never disappoints me. For years and years I have been dreaming of doing a simple landscape with a bridge – for me, a quintessential image of Russia. Eventually, this past year, I did it. It’s actually quite hard to pluck up the courage to do just a simple landscape panting.”
Finally, we turn to Bulatov’s self-portrait from 2011, also in the exhibition. It is a very striking image of the artist, who stares out of the picture with a seascape behind him. “It is one of the strongest artist’s selfportraits I have ever seen,” declares de Pury, and we ask Bulatov how he arrived at this composition. “I’m often asked how I choose a subject and I honestly do not know why, out of this enormous range of impressions that we all have in our lives, one particular thing demands to be expressed,” he replies. “In this instance, we were in a hotel in Monaco and there was a window facing the sea. I saw myself in a mirror and I just suddenly felt that there was something signifcant here. There are two spaces in the work, the depth of the sea and sky, and the artist’s gaze outwards. It’s a portrait but not so much about what I look like but rather what I am.” And while Bulatov has made few specifc selfportraits in his career, he acknowledges that, “whatever the artist does, it’s always a self-portrait”.
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From Gothic opulence to peasant simplicity, this winter’s styles are holding us spellbound. Photography by WENDY BEVAN Styling by NIKKI BREWSTER
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Previous spread. Dress by Reem Acra, jewellery by Pebble London This page. Vintage dress from Orsini, London, sandals by Malene Oddershede Bach Opposite. Dress by Luisa Beccaria, jewellery by Pebble London
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Previous spread. Cape, knickerbockers, cufs and choker by Giles, vintage shirt from Su Mason, London This page. Waistcoat by Carven, vintage shirt from Su Mason, London Opposite. Corset and trousers by Marques’Almeida, jewellery by Pebble London, sandals by Gianvito Rossi for Mary Katrantzou
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Dress by Alberta Ferretti, jewellery by Pebble London
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Previous spread, left. Dress and coat by Temperley London Previous spread, right. Shirt by Miu Miu, corset by Sian Hofman, vintage skirt from Orsini, London Opposite. Skirt and vintage shirt from One Vintage, London, corset by Sian Hofman, sandals by Malene Oddershede Bach
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Previous spread. Dress by Giles, sandals by Malene Oddershede Bach Opposite. Dress by Temperley London This page. Dress by Reem Acra, jewellery by Pebble London Hair Cher Savery at David Artists using Tigi Make-up Karina Constantine at CLM using MAC Model Maria Jukova at City Models Casting Madeleine Ă˜stlie at CLM Fashion assistant Grace Joel Creative director Daren Ellis Producer Maria Webster With special thanks to Villa Petrolea
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With the help of a studio of 55 people, Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos creates dreamlike sculptures big enough to overshadow the Palace of Versailles. Words by FREIRE BARNES Photography by PEDRO GUIMARAES
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hen I arrive at Joana Vasconcelos’s atelier it’s a hive of activity. Located in the Port of Lisbon in a former cereals storehouse, builders are noisily working on the studio’s expansion while women are cheerfully knitting around a table and men are meticulously sewing beads. Shelves are flled with boxes of all manner of coloured yarn and rolls of fabric are stacked against a wall. Sculptures are scattered around, some complete, others a work in progress. Hanging from the ceiling is one of the Portuguese artist’s versions of the iconic fligree heart of Viana, but instead of fne gold, it’s made out of red plastic forks. The 44-year-old artist has made a name for herself with her innovative use of recognizable objects and materials transformed into the unexpected. “Sculpture doesn’t have any rules,” she says of her immense pieces that incorporate traditional artisanal crafts, including embroidered textiles and ceramics. “I choose the materials not because of what they are, but because
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of what they mean. It’s not about the material anymore, it’s what you do with it – it’s the concept.” Vasconcelos’s work is as vivacious and characterful as she is. It fuctuates between the monumental and the intimately detailed. And it’s always extremely vibrant and complex, enthralling and confrontational. She frst gained international attention in 2005 when A Noiva (The Bride, 2001-05), a giant, empire-style
“TO RELEASE YOURSELF FROM ALL THE CRAZY STUFF, YOU NEED TO BE OPEN, HAPPY AND TO GET ALONG WITH YOURSELF.” chandelier sculpture made out of thousands of tampons, was included in Rosa Martínez’s exhibition, ‘Always a Little Further’, in the Arsenale at the 51st Venice Biennale. Vasconcelos was only 33 years old. “The truth is, if it wasn’t for Rosa’s sincerity, we wouldn’t be here. If I hadn’t got to show A Noiva at the Venice Biennale, no one would ever know me. My career pretty much started there.” It could have been quite different. At the end of the 1980s, Vasconcelos actually went to study drawing and jewellery at Lisbon’s Ar.Co Centre of Art and Visual Communication. “Jewellery was a period of my life but it was never an end,” she explains. “I didn’t understand back then but at the end of every jewellery project I was doing sculpture. So I already had this sculptural attitude.” By the time she left 1.
Previous spread: (main picture) Joana Vasconcelos in her Lisbon studio. 1. Tutti Frutti (2011). 2. The artist with Coração Independente Vermelho (Red Independent Heart, 2005). This spread: 1 & 3. A Noiva (The Bride, 2001–05). 2. The artist with True Faith (2014). 4. Coração Independente Vermelho (Red Independent Heart, 2005). 5. Miss Jasmine (2010). 6. Lilicoptère (2012). 7. Trafaria Paia (2013). 8 & 10. Works in progress in the artist’s studio. 9. Valkyrie Octopus (2015).
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she was making colourful object-based work. She began exhibiting from 1994, mainly in Lisbon, and even went back to teach at Ar.Co. Between 1998 and 2000 she was head of security for a nightclub called LUX, an unlikely place that would play an important part in Vasconcelos’s artistic trajectory. In 2001 the owner of LUX, Manuel Reis, invited her to show A Noiva, which she had made for a sculpture competition she didn’t win. “It was supposed to stay for a month and it stayed for six because everybody was so excited about it and it looked amazing in the space,” she tells me. It was here that Martínez saw the work and approached Vasconcelos about including it in a show she was organizing called ‘Trans Sexual Express’. “I didn’t win the contest but fnally I was going to be in my frst international 5. group show,” she says. “It may not happen one way but it happens in another.” After showing A Noiva repeatedly, Vasconcelos felt it was time to take a break until it could be shown in a place that would be seen by all the world. “So for two years there were no phone calls from Rosa until one day she calls to say, ‘I’ve found a place, the Venice Biennale,’ and I said, ‘Okay let’s go again’.” Since her Venetian break, Vasconcelos, who is exceptionally business savvy and forthright, knew she would need to build her profle and expand her catalogue of work if she wanted to maintain interest from curators and museums. “I understood that I had to do a lot more because nobody knew me,” she says. “Everybody knew the piece [A Noiva], but not the ‘artist’. So, since 2005 until today, I have been concerned with building a body of sustainable works that can be shown on a monumental scale.” She now has a burgeoning atelier family of 55 staff made up of multiple departments including her team of skilled collaborators. “I don’t fnd people, they come to me. It’s really strange,” she says. “They bring their knowledge, their traditions and their versatility and together we transform tradition into something new.” As we sit in Vasconcelos’s offce, full of colourful fare, from a Keith Haring print to papier-mâché carnival heads and the most brilliant armchair made out of Mickey Mouse’s cuddly toys by the Brazilian duo Fernando and Humberto Campana, I wonder if she considers herself a feminist, as she chooses to work with crafts so heavily associated with women? “I don’t see myself as a feminist in the traditional sense, but I really am in a way,” she ponders. “What interests me
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is that women still don’t have the same human rights as men, that’s what makes me a feminist.” One of Vasconcelos’s fnest career moments, certainly as a young female artist, came when she exhibited at Versailles in 2012. “In a way I always thought of myself doing Versailles,” she says. She was indeed born in France, to Portuguese parents, but returned to Lisbon when she was three. Apart from a few family members still there, she doesn’t have a strong affliation to the country, but there was no hesitation in accepting the invitation, “Everyone knows what Versailles means – it’s a kind of opera set – and I already had a body of work that had Versailles in the background as a scenario. But I had never expected to be invited.” Following in the footsteps of Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, she flled the Baroque palace with her elaborately 101 Baku.
detailed sculptures, including her ode to Marilyn Monroe – a pair of giant stilettoes made out of metal saucepans – and a helicopter covered in rhinestones and ostrich feather embroidered with Marie Antoinette’s initials. Then, a year later, she returned to Venice but this time to represent her country at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. “Portugal doesn’t have a pavilion so we thought we might as well do something completely different. I said, ‘Okay, let’s do a boat,” she explains. Considering the historical relationship between her country and that of Venice, for Trafaria Praia she converted a traditional Lisbon ferryboat known as a caciheiros into not only a foating pavilion but also the work itself. She tiled the outside using azulejos, tin-glazed ceramic tiles that were painted with a scene of 1. Lisbon, and inside she installed Valkyrie Azulejo (2013), a sumptuous bulbous form in varying shades of lapis lazuli that encompassed all of Vasconcelos’s signature styles. “I wanted to connect with the city in the present, bringing a boat from Lisbon to the vaporetto system of Venice. I wanted to connect with the real Venice and its people, not the artistic one.” Like her work, Vasconcelos is also very adaptable. She enjoys the challenge of working with different types of spaces. “I don’t think sculpture should be a decorative device of architecture,” she explains. Opulent period buildings certainly lend themselves to her enormous installations. She likes the way they invade the space: “When I did Contamination at François Pinault’s Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2013 for the exhibition ‘The World Belongs to You’, the piece was all around the building,” she says with glee. “It was subversive. ‘She’ was not in the place the architects had left for me. So it was contaminating the architectural space.” Vasconcelos is in high demand at the 2.
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moment. Next year alone she has seven exhibitions, including the Villa Borghese in Rome, Waddeson Manor in England and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. But her biggest challenge comes in the form of the Zaha Hadid-designed Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku. “It’s the most impressive building I’ve ever been to,” she says, and she is working to combine the building’s clean and white volume with colour and texture for her solo show in September 2016. However, such a space doesn’t come without its trials: “It’s really diffcult to communicate with it because it’s so powerful, so organic
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1, 4 & 9. Works in progress in the artist’s studio. 2. Marilyn (AP) (2011). 3. Contaminação (Contamination, 2011), at the 54th Venice Biennale. 5. Le Dauphin et La Dauphine (2012). 6. Vasconcelos’s work installed at the Palace of Versailles. 7. With fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. 8. At the opening of the ‘Esprit Dior, Miss Dior’ exhibition, Paris, 2013. 10. Adore Miss Dior (2013). 11. Todo o Vapor (Full Steam Ahead), Yellow (2014), Red (2012) and Green (2013).
FRANCE CHATEAU/DIRECTPHOTO COLLECTION/ALAMY. POLARIS/EYEVINE. LUIS VASCONCELOS/COURTESY UNIDADE INFINITA PROJECTOS. PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/BERTRAND RINDOFF PETROFF/PATRICK AVENTURIER/GETTY.
and in a way it’s already a sculpture. It’s a challenge, and I need to rebuild all my strategies.” Mid-conversation, Vasconcelos is called into a meeting about her major public sculpture, Pop Galo, that she’s currently working on. Commissioned by Rio de Janerio to commemorate the 450th anniversary of its founding by Portugal, Vasconcelos has created a giant ceramic sculpture of the Portuguese Galo de Barcelos, a brightly ornate rooster. As with previous works, she continues to subvert nationalistic emblems that can be bought at any tourist shop into symbols that connect the cultures and histories of two countries. On my way out I get to see the family spirit that keeps this lively atelier thriving, as everyone is learning a Bollywood-style 7.
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dance for the Christmas party. Everyone brings their children, who love to be given presents by the alternative Santa; a zebra last year, possibly a giraffe this year. Vasconcelos’s devotion to her team emanates around the atelier. Not only does the new studio complex include a dining hall where meals are selected each day by vote, but there’s also a gym, yoga and massage room. “We also have an astrologist who makes our own charts,” she says. “To create, to think and to release yourself from all the crazy stuff, you need to be open, happy and to get along with yourself. So everything I can and should do for that to happen, I do. This is not a job where you close the door and go home. This is a way of life, it’s not a vocation, it’s what I am. It’s like a river; it fows and it passes through a lot of things but it’s still the same water.”
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Left to right: qovurma shorbasi; lamb, tomatoes and peppers; a dish of qovurma.
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In the high mountains of Azerbaijan’s far southwest, the cuisine is infused with the delicate favours of dill, tarragon and basil, which inform a rich and centuriesold culinary tradition. Photography by RICHARD HAUGHTON Styling by TOM WOLFE Words by HELEN GRAVES
rriving in Nakhchivan, in southwest Azerbaijan, we pause to breathe deeply. The mountain air is fresh and rejuvenating, a light breeze tempering the heat of the late summer sun. Peaks rise around us; shades of soft peach and cream, tips brushed gold. The most famous mountain of the region is Ilan-dag, or Snake Mountain, a 2,415m craggy shadow with a cleft at the summit. Legend has it that the keel of Noah’s Ark, cleaving through the landscape as foodwaters receded, formed its distinctive shape. At the feet of these mountains, the great geological muscles that defne the region, focks of sheep graze idly in meadows. Lamb is central to the diet of the people in Nakhchivan. Most common is the Balbas breed, hardy and well adapted to grazing at altitude. Reared for their coarse wool, milk and meat, they come with the added beneft of fatty tail cushions, used to fortify traditional dishes and aid preservation of food. Before boarding the plane to Nakhchivan, we had had a lesson in what to expect from the region from Nakhchivan restaurant in Baku. “In olden times, there were no fridges in Nakhchivan,” the chefs remind us, “so our ancestors cooked the meat and buried it underground in earthenware pots.” This tradition survives today and the pot of meat, known as qovurma, is used in qovurma shorbasi, a rich russetcoloured stew favoured with lamb and bolstered with Ordubad beans and potatoes, which soak up the favours like sponges. The dish is rich with the fat of the meat, yet balanced by the acidity of tomatoes and marble-sized sour plums. To serve, eggs are poached gently on top, coddled in the barely steaming sauce. We see the meat again inside dolma, a general term used to describe stuffed vegetables, as well as rolled cabbage leaves and onionskins. The chefs 105 Baku.
at Nakhchivan restaurant are experts in the regional cuisine, saying that in the south, dolma are most frequently made with dikcha leaves, adding “they’re grown in Batabat in May, then harvested, dried and stored for use, in preparation for winter”. More readily available than vine leaves (which have a late harvest), they’re waxy under the fngertips when uncooked, smelling like sweet, just-cut grass. Once steamed and flled with meats, rice, yellow split peas and greens, they’re rendered delicate and light. The most spectacular lamb dish of all is surely the dadly qala, proudly presented by the chef Asiman Tagiyev as “the delicious fortress wall – so delicious that, once cooked, people couldn’t get enough of it!” Everyone gasps as a whole rack of lamb ribs arrives, arranged in a circular crown, flled with bulgur wheat and surrounded by roast potatoes and tomatoes, which have the appearance of stones from the wall. The origins of the dish lie in fnding a convenient way to cook the ribs, and this method allows them to ft snugly inside a tandoor. As a fnished dish it is striking, ft for a special occasion. If lamb defnes Nakhchivan cuisine then so too does the use of herbs, as we discover when we arrive in the region. Here they grow in the mountains, abundant, robust and strongly favoured. At each meal we are presented with feathery dill, soft, sweetly aniseed tarragon and heady basil. The last is special, a deep bruised purple with jagged edges and an intense, almost spicy favour – hot like the sun under which it thrived. Infused with water, sugar and lemon, it makes the refreshing drink reyhan sharbeti, a ‘sherbet’ with a glorious bright pink colour. A dish of keta (a regional version of qutab) shows off the herbs best of all. Along with sorrel and skinny green onions, they’re heaped onto squares of dough and folded like fragrant presents. Hot from the oven, they’re sliced and topped with pats of slowly melting butter, glistening and irresistible – “traditionally to be shared with neighbours,” Tagiyev tells us as he presents them. We see the raw ingredients for sale in the bustling market in Nakhchivan – bundles of greens, vegetables
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Opposite page, clockwise from top: dolma made with dikcha leaves; the distinctive outline of Ilan-dag, or Snake Mountain; a bird of prey; spinach chikhirtma, crisp potatoes with scrambled eggs, spinach and yoghurt. This page: reyhan sharbeti, a drink made with basil.
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Main picture: the dadly qala, or ‘delicious fortress wall’. Clockwise from right: nut-filled chocha pies; cabbage leaf dolma; Ordubad omelette with honey.
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Clockwise from right: keta filled with herbs, served with yoghurt; yemisan berries, used in drinks and compotes; a flock of Balbas sheep; local lemons; onionskin dolma; dash kofta with egg.
and sacks of dried fruits, another speciality of the region. We hold each one in turn, asking the seller, “are they peaches? Plums? Apricots?”, barely having time to identify each one before he eagerly offers another. His hands plunge repeatedly into hessian sacks and come up with fstfuls of fruits, precious bounty reserved for the harsh winter. Lemons, too, are prized. Aromatic and perfumed, we see them carefully displayed in neat rows at the market, sitting proudly upright like Fabergé eggs. Costing as much 109 Baku.
as 8 manat each (around €7), they’re expensive, so it’s no wonder they’re reserved for special occasions. In high summer it is very hot here, but now, later in the season, it is getting cooler. At Dadash, a restaurant with a spectacular mountain backdrop, we gladly sip hot tea and eat pears stuffed with spiced sugar. Sweet, chewy fgs bring with them the lingering favour of the season, soft and warm from the afternoon sun. Golden honey gives a sunkissed coating to an Ordubad omelette, an unusual dish made by whisking clarifed butter with eggs to make a layered cake. There are pastries, too, such as chocha – a nut pie traditionally baked for Novruz celebrations, which mark the beginning of spring. This is a hugely signifcant time of year for the people of Azerbaijan, and it’s when the ever-present lamb is at its tender best on the celebratory table. As bulrushes sway and clear waters bubble around the pastures of the beautiful Lake Batabad, thoughts turn to the signifcance of sheep in Nakhchivan, from feld to festival to fork. They defne daily life, from the steady plod of the shepherd’s staff as he drives his fock up the hillside, to the hectic kitchen of Dadash. In the kitchen there, many cooks’ hands stir pots of areshta ashe (a dish of lamb and short lengths of handmade noodles), or fashion dash kofta by wrapping eggs in pounded meat. The kitchen buzzes with life, the sounds of chopping and the clatter of spoons. Groups of women roll dolma, chatting and beckoning us over, while men Clockwise from top right: a variation of qutab filled with carrots and chicken; lamb and vegetables cooking at Dadash; areshta ashe, a dish of lamb and noodles; cooks at Dadash; a Nakhchivan mosque; Ashabi-Kehf, the Cave of the Seven Sleepers.
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tend vast pans, stirring potatoes and meat, weighing down lids with stones. “Come! Come!” they say, lifting the lids to let out great puffs of lamb-scented steam, “you must taste this!” The dishes are robust, and it’s easy to see how they fortify and comfort in the chilly mountain climate. The signifcance of sheep in the history of this land is again made clear by a visit to the elaborately decorated 10-sided, 26m-high tower of the Momine Khatun Mausoleum, commissioned by atabek Jahan Pahlavan in honour of his wife and built in 1186–87 AD. Displayed nearby are medieval stone carvings of sheep, well preserved, sturdy and dependable, just like their real-life counterparts. These beasts have been fundamental in the survival of the people here for centuries, and the calm and gentle animals are a true representation of the spirit of Nakhchivan, a peaceful place shaped by the footfall of hooves and the might of mountains.
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Opposite: baked lavash; and scenes from the area, including Lake Batabad. This page, main picture: a dish of vegetable dolma. Above: dishes and ingredients including (from left) lamb and vegetables; badam bura, pastries dusted with icing sugar; pears growing on the tree; dried fruits; and local landmark Momine Khatun Mausoleum.
Producer: Maria Webster. Special thanks: Nakhchivan Restaurant, Baku; Dadash Restaurant, Nakhchivan 113 Baku.
Words by SIMON DE PURY
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BILLY FARRELL AGENCY/REX SHUTTERSTOCK.
Simon de Pury’s Instagram profle has him down as an auctioneer, art dealer, curator, artist and DJ but to his 138k followers he is better known as the guy with the best little black book in contemporary art today. Here, he shares the stories behind some of his favourite posts.
ALEX ISRAEL When I saw Alex in his studio I couldn’t resist photographing him in the same pose as his iconic self-portraits. Thus began my habit to photograph each artist I visit in his or her studio.
GERHARD RICHTER Gerhard Richter has so much presence that even in a crowded room, you notice only him. I took this at the Richter show that Hans Ulrich Obrist curated for the Fondation Beyeler.
WADE GUYTON I took this in front of one of his XXL works at the Kunsthalle Zürich. Later, I saw Wade with longer hair in Beirut at the launch of the Aïshti Foundation. He now looks like Jesus Christ.
JOE BRADLEY Joe is totally unassuming and I have had the pleasure of photographing him on various occasions.
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SAM FALLS This was taken at the opening of his 2014 show at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich.
TOREY THORNTON Taken in his temporary New York studio. I tried to acquire the work behind him but alas with little success.
KAWS Initially I was an avid collector of his toy art. Meanwhile, he has very successfully graduated to being an all-round artist.
PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU His 2015 show at the Serpentine confrmed what a powerful artist he is. He stands in front of a work consisting of coloured chalks used by school pupils in Cameroon.
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AYAN FARAH Working with textiles has the advantage that you can store your works in drawers and they don’t take up too much space. Unsurprisingly, Ayan’s studio is among the smaller ones.
ANTONY GORMLEY Working in Thaddaeus Ropac’s gigantic space in Pantin on the outskirts of Paris allowed Antony to show his new work in optimal conditions.
HUSEYN HAQVERDI I photographed Huseyn in front of the installation he did for the Azerbaijan pavilion of the 2015 Venice Biennale that I had the privilege to co-curate with Emin Mammadov.
GEORGE CONDO “This woman got me into a lot of trouble”, is what George told me when I photographed him next to this work in Per Skarstedt’s London gallery.
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JONAS WOOD This makes me slightly sad. It was taken in front of Schindler House, which Jonas was painting. Despite all my pleading with his then NY dealer, the work was sold to a collector friend.
SHIO KUSAKA Shio has her LA studio adjacent to that of her husband Jonas Wood. It is wonderful to see how they mutually infuence and inspire each other’s work.
GLENN LIGON I had missed the opening of his show earlier that evening but luckily there was a beautiful work by Glenn hanging in the home of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, where I took this snap.
KATHRYN ANDREWS Her studio was flled with props. When I saw this costume worn by The Joker in one of the Batman movies, I felt the question mark captured well the inquisitive nature of her work.
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STERLING RUBY I always want to see the work before I meet the artist so my reaction to the work is not infuenced. After I had fallen in love with Sterling’s work, I also fell in love with him as a person.
WANGECHI MUTU Besides being a very good artist, Wangechi is a stunningly beautiful woman. I took this at Rush Philanthropic’s gala in East Hampton, 2015, where we were both being honoured.
JOHN ARMLEDER John is supremely important and infuential. I do hope to see the day when the art market will recognize this. I had to show him in profle so that you can see his trademark ponytail.
MARY WEATHERFORD Visiting Mary’s studio is like meeting a long-lost hippy friend and reminiscing about the good old times.
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JEFF ELROD It is diffcult to photograph some of Jeff’s work since the autofocus doesn’t know what to do with the blurry surfaces. Taking this of him standing in front of his work resolved the problem.
GUILLAUME BRUERE More than nearly any artist I know, Guillaume puts his heart and soul into his works. I photographed him next to his large self-portrait.
MARK GROTJAHN The power and quality of Mark’s work always overwhelms me, but here I managed to retain my composure suffciently to photograph him without too much shaking.
ERIK BULATOV The piercing gaze of Erik makes this one of my all-time favourite self-portraits. This was taken in his Paris studio in 2015 as we were preparing for his frst London show since 1989.
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MARK BRADFORD Mark is so incredibly tall that I do not know how I managed to photograph him more or less at eye level. The intensity of his gaze is only matched by the quality of his work.
OLAFUR ELIASSON At the recent Fondation Beyeler beneft that I had the honour of auctioneering at, the work that Olafur donated and that I used as a backdrop for this portrait makes him Saint Olafur.
MICHAEL CHOW In LA, a city not short of artistic talent, Michael Chow is one of the most promising ‘young artists’ to have emerged recently.
ED RUSCHA Like Napoleon, who wore a much simpler uniform than any of his generals, Ed’s LA studio is a mere fraction of the size of the studios used by almost any other artist.
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t takes a particular dedication and set of skills to photograph mountainous scenery well. Reaching a remote and high-altitude location such as the peaks in Shahdag National Park in the Caucasus mountains of northern Azerbaijan is taxing in itself. But Emil Khalilov specializes in this subject, has the right equipment and knows the region well. First of all, describe the types of landscape you find up there in the mountains. There are no metalled roads up there, only narrow paths over the ravines. So, the impact of people on nature has been minimal. There are streams with very pure water and in spring the alpine meadows are full of flowers. In winter you can look up at a blue sky you’d never see from the lowlands. Why choose to work in inaccessible areas like this? It’s one of the most remote areas of Azerbaijan, especially in winter. In summer you meet shepherds driving their flocks to the high pastures. In winter, in the highest areas, you see the odd climber. I think it is the most beautiful part of the country. The absence of people and the sheer natural beauty – these are the two things that attract me most. But when I’m photographing a landscape, I do sometimes include a person (usually a mountaineer) to give an idea of the scale.
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Sight The nature conservation area of the High Caucasus is a challenging environment to be in. Photographer Emil Khalilov explains why he feels compelled to share his experiences of working there.
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Explain the techniques behind the night-time shots. With the development of digital technology, night photography is available to everyone – but here, actually, success depends on using high-quality equipment. For night photos, I use wide-angle lenses to capture as much starry sky as I can and shoot in manual mode at maximum aperture. Because of the long exposures, I use a special lightweight tripod that is strong enough to support the camera and lens, but light enough to carry. I decide on the locations during the day and usually choose subjects according to whether I’m expecting a moonlit or moonless night. Have you had any close encounters with wildlife up there? Mostly I see the East Caucasian tur [a mountain goat] and the Caucasian snowcock [a kind of partridge]. In winter you can see wolf tracks in the snow. You have worked in some of the world’s other great ranges. Does working in the Caucasus feel any different? Yes, sometimes I take photos in the Nepalese and Indian Himalayas, but I grab every chance to visit my own range – it’s like playing football at your home ground. I feel completely free, and though I know the mountains well, I always find something new each visit. The American landscape photographer Ansel Adams said that “landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer”. Do you agree? Yes, I do. It’s difficult to take a landscape photograph and convey the mood, the feeling of the place. The results are usually like characterless postcards. Incidentally, I agree even more with the second part of that quote, “and often the supreme disappointment”.
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Illustrator Telegramme gives the historic streets and buildings of Baku’s Old Town the Art Deco poster treatment.
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ature tourism in Iceland has become big business over the past couple of decades. Since 2000, the annual visitor count has trebled to almost one million, and inevitably such numbers will have an effect upon the sensitive natural environment that the island possesses. But it is that landscape, unique in Europe, that attracts tourists and that led me there to look more closely at how that impact is managed.
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ARCTIC IMAGES/ALAMY. OLI HAUKUR/OZZO PHOTOGRAPHY.
The Breathing Land
The volcanic landscape of Iceland explodes into life before your eyes. Leyla Aliyeva explores its dynamic environment.
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As I was there for only a short time, I chose to do the Golden Circle, the popular tourist route from Reykjavik, to see the main sights. I was keen to see how Náttúruverndarlög, the country’s environmental conservation programme, was put into action in such areas. We explored Thingvellir National Park with the Gullfoss waterfall and the geysers of Haukadalur. I was so impressed by the way in which visitors, through thoughtful management of the sites, can feel part of the landscape without endangering the delicate ecosystems. Similarly, in the waters around Iceland, much work has been done to protect species such as the fn whale while allowing the very popular whale watching trips. 134 Baku.
I wanted to know more about the conservation efforts being made in Iceland, and while there are few threats to the environment there, I can see that careful planning is needed not only to accommodate future tourism, but also in managing the various hydroelectric and geothermal energy projects. Yet it’s easy to forget the practical demands of protecting the land when you’re among the mountains and glaciers of Iceland – with the geysers and volcanoes, it feels as if the whole Earth is breathing. At times, it felt as if we were in a fairy tale, especially on the black beach at Solheimasandur. But perhaps my strongest recollection of the trip is of the people there, and how warm and welcoming they were.
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OLI HAUKUR/OZZO PHOTOGRAPHY. MARCO BRIVIO/GETTY.
Previous spread: (main picture) the aurora borealis, or northern lights, over Lake Thingvellir; horse-riding in Kjoastadir; and the Strokkur geyser. This spread, clockwise from top left: the Gullfoss waterfall; Reykjavik harbour and the Harpa concert hall; the city seen from offshore; Thingvellir National Park; horse-riding in Kjoastadir; going whale watching; and the black sand at Solheimasandur with a beached whale.
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THE GLOBAL CULTURAL BAROMETER ILLUSTRATIONS BY SÉBASTIEN THIBAULT
Cultural MRI Beer, techno and street art – it’s Rome, but not as you know it, says Lee Marshall
CULTURAL MRI The Eternal City brews the new.
MEME Who wears the trousers in tango?
ART AGONY UNCLE Advice from our expert.
ARS LONGA Talking the talk.
SCI-ART A question of karma.
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ome is a city whose cultural points of reference are rooted in the past, in emperors and popes, in baroque palazzos and overpriced Via Veneto cafes peddling tired Dolce Vita clichés. But something new is brewing in the Eternal City. In one case, the brewing is happening quite literally. At Birstrò, in the city’s buzzy, offpiste Pigneto neighbourhood, Claudio Angelilli makes beers, like golden ale Prima, to serve on the premises. His is the only true brewpub within the city limits, but it’s part of a craft beer movement that Rome has been nurturing, one expressed today in a swathe of new pubs with selections of micro-brewery beers that run into the dozens. For Angelilli, it’s paradoxically the long Roman love affair with
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wine that has made this possible. “It’s a genetic thing,” he says. “Roman palates demand more than just a commercial, thirst-quenching drink, so there’s a demand for new tastes in beer, for experimentation.” Angelilli likes to think of Birstrò as a “neighbourhood craft workshop”, and it’s this community aspect, plus the fact that it’s in an area far from the historic centre, that makes his brewpub so representative of Rome’s new creative wave. If you stick to the area between the Colosseum and St Peter’s, you’re unlikely to tap into Rome’s new vibe. Whether it be the breathtaking murals of the Big City Life project in Tor Marancia, painted on the end walls of 17 anonymous council housing blocks by an international team of street artists working closely with local residents, or the electronic music scene centring on onenighters such as Rebel Rebel or Resistance is Techno that flourish in the post-industrial
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wastelands on either side of the city’s G.R.A. ring road, much of the Italian capital’s current underground energy is being generated in the ’burbs. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the outskirts simply offer more space for the new. Inaugurated in 2010 on the site of a former military barracks, Zaha Hadid’s visionary MAXXI art and architecture museum has brought new vigour to the Flaminio district, across the river from the Stadio Olimpico, continuing a process of urban renewal kick-started in 2002 by
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Renzo Piano’s nearby music park Auditorium Parco della Musica. But alongside such outposts of official culture, the underground is thriving. Right across the road from MAXXI, another disused military barracks was taken over by a crew of street artists in October 2015 as part of the Outdoor Festival, an annual celebration of open-air urban creativity. “These hidden spaces act as
1. Bar San Calisto, Trastevere. 2. Auditorium Parco della Musica. 3. The Jerry Thomas Project. 4. One of the murals in the Big City Life street art project in Tor Marancia. 5. The Rome skyline as seen from the top of the Vittorio Emanuele II monument. 6. A display at the Outdoor Festival, 2015. 7. Street art by Blu on Via del Porto Fluviale in Ostiense. 8. The old Peroni brewery, now the MACRO art museum. 9. Dance at Romaeuropa. 10. Gallerist Lorcan O’Neill. 11. Marzapane chef Alba Esteve Ruiz.
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3. a sounding board for a whole generation of young artists,” says resident photoblogger and artist manager Jessica Stewart, who has been following Rome’s vibrant street art scene for the best part of a decade. Other abandoned spaces, including a military fort (Forte Prenestina) and a disused greyhound track (the Ex Cinodromo, now part of the Acrobax Project) have become centri sociale – the Italian term for collectively run community centres. Both now count among Rome’s top alternative live music venues. Over the years, some of these ‘cultural squats’ have been recognized by city authorities and have even achieved a level of gentrification, chief among them being the early 20th-century Pastificio Cerere pasta factory in the boho San Lorenzo neighbourhood.
staffed by a crew of bearded and mustachioed hipsters. For there is life amid the Roman ruins and the cobbled lanes of the centre as well, if you know where to look. Just off Via Margutta, where the journalist played by Gregory Peck rented an apartment in the classic 1953 film Roman Holiday, is the studio of Roman artist Cristiano Pintaldi, who paints huge canvases that mimic the blurred pointillism of blown-up TV and advertising imagery. Having returned to his home town after being part of London’s Hoxton art scene for five years, Pintaldi is excited about the city’s new creative wave but also believes that this is a place where old and new can co-exist without conflict. “Rome gives you life,” he enthuses. “It’s impossible to walk through all that beauty without being affected by it.”
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BAILEY-COOPER PHOTOGRAPHY 3/BJANKA KADIC/FRANCESCO GUSTINCICH/STEFANO MONTESI/ADAM EASTLAND/ALAMY. SIEPHOTO/MASTERFILE/CORBIS. COURTESY GALLERIA LORCAN O’NEILL ROMA.
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Occupied towards the end of the 1970s by a group of Roman artists in search of studio space, Cerere today boasts an upscale shabby-chic restaurant and rents out fully refurbished studios to a new generation of artists such as the politically engaged Pietro Ruffo and edgy installationist Micol Assaël. Meanwhile, the southern districts of Testaccio, Ostiense and Garbatella, bristling with converted former industrial spaces, are home to craft pubs (Stavio, Hopside) and clubs (Rashomon, Goa), as well as being the operational HQ of the city’s world-class performing arts festival, Romaeuropa. Even cocktails have gone underground. Cult nightspots include Co.So. in Pigneto, the brainchild of Massimo d’Addezio, a man who mixes his own bitters out of herbs and spices and was one of the first in Italy to use fat-washed spirits in drinks such as his celebrated Carbonara Sour. Or nuovo-retro speakeasy The Jerry Thomas Project, located, for once, in the heart of the centro storico, which is
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1. MAXXI The opening of this ‘Museum of the 21st century’ in 2010 was a rallying call for all that is new in Rome. Zaha Hadid’s audacious design – resembling a 3D motherboard – has sometimes overshadowed the art and architecture shows held inside, but MAXXI is learning and evolving, and Romans are responding enthusiastically. fondazionemaxxi.it
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2. BAR SAN CALISTO Rome’s ultimate bohemian bar lends a frisson of rough trade to the otherwise touristy neighbourhood of Trastevere. Working in shifts from dawn until well after dusk, rastas, artists, actors, goths and creatures of the night all sit around cradling Peronis or using an affogato (a gloop of ice cream served in an espresso) as a hangover cure. +39 010 022010
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LORCAN O’NEILL Irish-born Lorcan O’Neill has dominated the city’s private gallery scene in the last decade. Now in a new space in 17thcentury Palazzo Santacroce, O’Neill represents hot Roman artist Pietro Ruffo plus a roster of big international names. lorcanoneill.com
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STEN & LEX Thirtysomething duo Sten & Lex are at the forefront of Rome’s buzzing street art scene. One of their most atmospheric creations adorns the wall of a roofless 16th-century convent in Mentana, just outside the city. stenlex.net
4. MACRO TESTACCIO Unfairly overshadowed by its state-owned cousin MAXXI, Rome’s municipal contemporary art space spreads over two venues in different parts of the city. Exhibitions at the Testaccio branch are given extra spice by the setting – a former slaughterhouse, with the meat hooks still much in evidence. museomacro.org
MASSIMO D’ADDEZIO In 2013, Rome’s undisputed cocktail king left the luxury cocoon of the Hotel de Russie for Co.So. in Pigneto. Next stop, in spring 2015, was Chorus, a marble-lined bar-club in Rome’s premier classical music venue. choruscafe.it ALBA ESTEVE RUIZ Rome’s best-value gourmet meal is the €30 lunch tasting menu at Marzapane, a warm, light-filled spot whose kitchen is led by chef Alba Esteve Ruiz. marzapaneroma.com
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CLAUDIO GALLORINI AND VALERIO SERRANTI Gallorini and Serranti are the names behind Rebel Rebel, a world-class techno all-nighter. In summer, find it at a shabby Tiber-side sports club. In winter, it moves to the aptly named Warehouse, off Via Salaria. whrome.com
3. PASTIFICIO CERERE This former pasta factory claims the European record for the greatest number of artists’ studios under one roof. Linked to the San Lorenzo group in the 1970s and 1980s, the Pastificio was smartened up around the turn of the millennium and now also hosts exhibitions, performances, courses, and a cool restaurant and bar, Pastificio San Lorenzo. pastificiocerere.it
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5. BIRSTRÒ On one side of a glass wall are the steel vats of Claudio Angelilli’s microbrewery, on the other the simple chairs and tables that won’t distract from the main act – homebrewed beers. Try IPA Pigneta, named in honour of the bar’s Pigneto home. Claudio’s brother Danilo is in charge of food: think gourmet burgers and traditional Roman dishes such as bucatini all’amatriciana. birstro.it
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. Meme It takes two to tango – but which two? The traditional roles of this sultry 19th-century dance are being given a 21st-century twist, finds Sally Howard.
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tanding a diminutive one and a half metres in her strappy stilettos, Peninsula Cho is the unlikely face of a revolution. In July 2012, few were surprised when the South Korean tangista, dancing with her male partner Paso Han, won the Asian Tango Championship in Tokyo. The couple danced a spectacular take on the traditional Tango de Salon, with Han sweeping a lightning-footed Cho around the dancefloor as her intricately beaded dress twinkled like a
clear night sky. Their place at the world cup Mundial de Tango in Argentina assured, Cho then made an electrifying demand. She would dance the tango with Han in Buenos Aires but refused to be led by him: she demanded the right to lead. Cho’s bold stance provoked an outpouring of support on social media and a year-long crisis in tango officialdom. In April 2013, the world tango community received the remarkable news: from the 2013 Munidal de Tango, men and women would be able to dance as leaders or followers and
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same-sex couples would be able to participate, a first in 120 years of pro-level Tango de Salon. Strictly demarcated female and male dance roles are a motif of partnered dance styles, from flamenco to foxtrot and German folk. Traditional tango, which emerged in the workingclass districts of Buenos Aires in the 1890s, is the apotheosis of this tradition, a ‘threeminute love affair’ between a machismo male marcar and a smouldering female responder in which, as Canadian academic Dina O’Meara puts it: “men are manly and women wrap their legs quite conspicuously around them.” Binarised roles also dictate the etiquette of the tango social event, or milonga, in which female followers sit apart from male leaders and invitation to dance is via the cabeceo: eye contact initiated by the man, followed by a nod of acquiescence from the woman. Marc Vanzwoll is one of a growing number of dancers who, like Cho, are challenging tango’s foundational clichés. “The image of tango is of
Magra Nagel set up milonga Nuevas Milongueras, “a joyful space [in which] dancers are free to express themselves”. The first gender-blind tango championship followed, in Hamburg, later that year. Progressive tango might have remained an obscure outpost of the German dance scene were it not for the Argentinian depression of the early 2000s. In its immediate aftermath, the Argentinian government pursued an aggressive policy of boosting tango tourism to the capital Buenos Aires. Professor Melissa A. Fitch is the author of Global Tango: Travels in the Transnational Imaginary (Bucknell University Press). “Many of these tango tourists found the machismo in the milonga unwelcoming,” she recounts. “So they challenged the status quo, refusing to adhere to codes; dancing in free and open-role styles, be it women leading or men dancing with men.” Today, Buenos Aires is the nexus of a globalized progressive tango scene. The open-role tango festival, Festival
3. a wilting woman and a machismo male with a rose clamped between his teeth,” says Vanzwoll, who has won traditional tango competitions in his native San Francisco dancing as a male follower and now teaches progressive tango in Boston. “Trouble is, how many men and women fit these cartoon characters? Not many.” The first seeds of the openrole tango movement were sown in Germany in 2001. Hamburg tango teacher Ute Walter was dismayed by the restrictions of traditional tango, which limited female dancers’ self-expression to subtle adornos or decorations, and by an ageism in the milonga, which often left talented older female dancers partnerless. In response, Walter and fellow female tango dancer
Tango Queer de Buenos Aires, is now in its ninth year and there’s a growing acceptance of same-sex dancers following Cho’s landmark rule change. A tourist souvenir currently selling on Caminito, a street museum in Buenos Aires, depicts two men dancing tango together, one dressed as a soldier and one in soccer kit. Aurelie Thievant is a 52-yearold female tango enthusiast from France who dances as both a leader and follower. She has competed at amateur openrole championships in Paris and Buenos Aires and is looking forward to a progressive tango marathon event in Oldenburg in Germany, in April. “I love progressive tango for its sense of freedom,” Thievant says. “Whether I dance as a leader or follower depends on my partner
DANIEL GARCIA/ALEJANDRO PAGNI/AFP/GETTY. COURTESY MELISSA A. FITCH.
and mood, rather than the accident of my biological sex.” That said, complications arise from this fluidity of roles. Rather than dressing androgynously, as some female open-role enthusiasts do, Thievant sticks to dresses – “they dance with you, which I love” – but soon discovered that it was impossible to perform a leader role in the vertiginous stilettos that have become the norm in Tango de Salon. She now wears Pedinis, ballet dancer teachers’ shoes, for stability and balance should she be dancing in lead. Footwear isn’t the only innovation borne of the progressive tango tradition. “There’s even new terminology,” says Marc Vanzwoll. “‘Cambio’, for changing roles between dances in the tanda [set of songs], and ‘intercambo’ for the challenging practice of changing roles, often with a barely perceptible prompt, within a single song.” Progressive tango has its critics. Traditionalists invoke the fact that male-male dancing is forbidden under Argentinian law [the 1997 Edict Against Public Dancing], a law which happily is seldom enforced. Professor Fitch notes that men dancing with men can attract hostility in more conservative Buenos Aires milongas and that women
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Performances at the Tango World Championship in Buenos Aires by (1) Marlene Heyman (left) and Lucia Christe, 2013, (2) Peninsula Cho (left) and Paso Han, 2012, (3) Nicolas and German Filipeli, 2014, and (4) Cho in the follower role with Chan, Tokyo, 2012.
dancing with women are sometimes stigmatised as being ‘not good enough’ to dance with the opposite sex. Vanzwoll dismisses such animosity: “This is just the old guard refusing to adjust,” he says. “Open-role tango will become the norm for the upcoming generation of tango dancers. It’s in their hands now.” Nothing would compel Vanzwoll to revert to the old, gender-demarcated tango style. “No way!” he hoots, pointing out that freer styles lead to a boost in ‘tangotonin’, the tango world’s idiom for a dancing buzz. “Tango is not about acting out silly gender stereotypes,” Vanzwoll says. “Tango is at its best when it’s about two people dancing, communicating and – above all – having fun.”
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. Art Agony Uncle Confused about art? Allow Kenny Schachter to help you out. I like the work of Koen van der Broek and Howard Hodgkin but have heard it described as “easy abstraction”. Now I feel that I have not been hard-line enough in my tastes. Peter, Amsterdam Art is art, you know it when you see it. As long as you are exposed to good information or know your stuff, you are fine. By mentioning the two gifted abstractionists in question, you obviously have one or both attributes – so follow your heart. Besides, there is nothing easy about Hodgkin’s Hodkin’s seemingly seeminglyeffortless effortless, childlike childlike blobs blobs ofof paint paint spilling onto his frames or, for that matter, Koen’s jagged blocks of colour caught between recognizable imagery and geometrical formalism. For ages I have been collecting the same kind of art. Should I stop wasting my money or keep at it? Jo, Berlin Read above. You must always follow your gut instincts but keep in mind that art is a slow-burning, organic process, the knowledge from which accrues at a very slow pace. You could spend $1m on a bronze sculpture at any number of reputable galleries and end up with something not worth the value of the melted metal, or another thing altogether worth millions more in a very short period of time. There is no real mystery as to which artist is which, the only thing that reveals such secrets is connoisseurship is connoisseurship – the – the actact of of looking, looking, reading reading and and learning over learning an extended over an extended period ofperiod years. of Keep years. going Keep and going stick with and stick your with intuition yourgrounded intuition grounded in studies.in studies. I’m thinking of buying photographs but what route do I go down? David LaChappelle’s tableaux? The Bechers’ water towers? Fashion photography? Sonia, London Those Great photographers are great photographers you mention. youFunnily mention. enough, Funnilyin enough, a past life, in before a past life, I found before my Ireal found calling my real in art, calling I was,in art, among I was, other among things, other David things, LaChappelle’s David LaChappelle’s lawyer. David lawyer. is fun but, David with is all fundue but,respect, with allBernd due respect, (1931-2007) Berndand and HillaHilla Becher Becher (1934-2015) are a brilliant are a choice. brilliantAside choice. from Aside from teaching the world’s most famous (and expensive) living photographer, Andreas Gursky, they were trailblazing artists. They reduced photographic imagery down to clinical black and white grids of industrial architecture, but in doing so, rendered the soulless structures of a post-industrial world into a beautiful poetic language all of their own. It’s still early in the rest of the world’s appreciation for such influential art, andso impactful go get it, art, and soget go, it get fast, it and before get it’s it fast. too Before late. it’s too late.
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Email your art dilemmas to dearkenny@condenast.co.uk
Sharing space – Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei in Australia, Yves Saint Laurent and Jacques Doucet in Paris; joint shows are everywhere in 2016.
Art vandalism – 2015 saw a spike in the number of graffiti attacks on artworks around the world. Can we please be more respectful?
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. Ars Longa Small talk? You too can be an accidental art guru, says Dylan Jones, British GQ’s editor-in-chief.
(actually not very much at all in this case). However, the problem is that Ann Sitari doesn’t actually exist, and the person about whom Nimrod spoke so loudly that night was in fact Sri Astari, the Indonesian artist whose work featured prominently in the country’s pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. And so every
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1. Sri Astari’s ‘Dancing the Wild Seas’ in the Indonesia Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. 2. ‘Shackled Cinderella’ (2000) by Astari. 3. The artist.
o, there is this friend of mine. Let’s called him Nimrod, although his real name is Harry. Nimrod was at this dinner to mark the end of Frieze (there are now so many parties and dinners organized to celebrate the start, the finish and the in-between of Frieze that the art fair has started to resemble the football season), and was sitting between an oligarch’s wife (actually it may have been his mistress, as Nimrod wasn’t exactly sure) and a friend of his mother (who is an artist herself, or was the last time anyone looked). He was having a whale of a time, knocking back the upscale sauvignon blanc and working his way through a tasting menu supplied by someone who aspired to one day being the next Mark Hix. Obviously all that anyone could talk about was art, and the ups and the downs and the ins and the outs of who happened to be in London that week. And Nimrod, being a chap who prides himself on knowing a thing or two about the art world, spent all night talking about the pros and cons of Ann Sitari, who is obviously still one of the hottest names on the circuit right now (or was the last time anyone looked). Nimrod is a huge fan of her work, and spent the entire evening discussing her motivations, her pricing strategy, her agent, her gallery, and even what Nimrod knew about her sex life
time he referenced something that had happened to Ann Sitari he was in fact talking about Sri Astari. Now, normally this would have been so embarrassing for my friend that he would have had to immediately leave town, quit the art world and become a sheep farmer in New Zealand (which I gather has become quite fashionable, or indeed was the last time anyone looked). But the great thing about Nimrod’s faux pas was the fact that neither the wife/mistress nor the friend of the mother noticed. They were both oblivious, and spent the whole evening
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nodding whenever Nimrod said anything interesting about Ann Sitari. All of which had taught my friend a big lesson. And what did it teach him? It taught him that in the art world, much like in Hollywood, nobody knows
anything. Nothing at all. Nada. Zilch. Diddly-squat. If you happen to be at a fashion party, then it is perfectly acceptable for you to bang on about a completely made-up artist, as odds-on nobody will know what the hell you are talking about. Nobody will want to look like a fool by asking you who this person is, or indeed what it is they do. They will simply nod, sip their overpriced Bordeaux and push some peas around their plate. And actually the same goes for the art crowd, as there is no one alive in this world (and most of the people in the art world are still alive, or at least were the last time anyone looked) who will ever admit to not knowing what goes on inside it. There are more artists currently practising in the world than at any time in the past, so it is quite conceivable that a new artist has just popped his or her head above the parapet. And if this gormless, overexcited and quite possibly
3. drunk young chap next to you is going to talk about him or her all night, then it is your solemn duty to nod, sip and push food around your plate. And if you don’t believe me, then I simply ask you to take the following challenge. The next time you’re at a fashion/art dinner, or indeed an art/fashion dinner, and the conversation is drying up, instead of drinking yourself blind or stupid, just drop this new name into the conversation: Bellow Strain. You can talk about Bellow Strain’s conceptual masterpieces, you can talk about the fact that he was adopted in Jamaica in the early noughties, and you can talk about the torrid affair he has just finished with the wife of a certain ambassador. Not only will you have terrific fun, but you might also get a magazine article out of it.
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. Science x Art
an extraordinary moment in the history of art, but they offer insight into a philosophical system that completely transcends what many people may imagine when they think about Tibetan Buddhism.” It could be said this comes as repayment of a debt. For decades now, the current Dalai Lama has been bringing scientists into his home. His hunger to understand the frontiers of human knowledge is a credit to his open-mindedness. Perhaps most challenging to his world view has been the realm of quantum physics, which declares that reality is not always a consequence of something. In quantum physics, particles such as atoms and electrons have properties that manifest at random. To Buddhists, who live according
Buddhism and quantum physics may seem poles apart, but both are exploring dimensions beyond time and space, says Michael Brooks.
health researchers are realizing that mental states have strong effects on the immune system, ones that have long been acknowledged in spiritual practices. “Mindfulness, a core practice of all Buddhist lineages, is already being used as a clinical tool against depression and anxiety,” says Ruth Garde, co-curator of the exhibition. There is good reason to avoid – or at least deal with – stress, for instance. It has well-documented mental effects, such as depression, but the body’s response can sometimes be to unleash the killer proteins of the immune system, cytokines. The result can be a depressed immune system and a heightened susceptibility to viruses, less responsiveness to vaccination and slowed healing of cuts and bruises.
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1. A detail from the Lukhang temple murals (c. 1700), Tibet. 2. Early 20th-century Buddhist drawings illustrating mental and physical health systems.
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n the late 17th century, Buddhist monks had the idea of laying out their knowledge to help humans achieve greater enlightenment. They didn’t write scientific papers, as was beginning to happen in the European Enlightenment. Instead, they created art. The giant murals in Lhasa’s Lukhang temple – which show the traditional Tibetan medical system – were painted for the edification of the Dalai Lamas. “The more you know about
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Tibet, yoga and meditation, the more you see in them,” says Thomas Laird, a photographer who has been given permission to create life-sized digital transparencies of the murals. Although they were designed as secret resources, visitors to London’s Wellcome Collection will now have access. Laird’s transparencies are on display as part of an exhibition exploring Tantric Buddhism, ‘Tibet’s Secret Temple’. According to Ian Baker, a Tibetan scholar and co-curator of the exhibition, “These murals not only represent
to strict rules of consequence, this is unthinkable. But worth investigating nonetheless, the Dalai Lama admits. That sentiment – worth investigating – is equally true now that the pendulum is swinging from west to east. Western scientists are starting to acknowledge that they can no longer ignore the evidence in a long-overlooked case of cause and effect: the consequences of the mind’s health on our physical health. Though they might not be reaching for spiritual enlightenment, many
For Buddhists, the sacred shape of the temple involves three tiers that represent outer reality, inner experience and a transcendent dimension – the space beyond time and space. Quantum physics and relativity, our best scientific descriptions of the universe, are currently pointing to the existence of parallel worlds, hidden extra dimensions and the illusory nature of the time and space we inhabit. So these two knowledge systems are coming closer than ever before in history. And not a moment too soon.
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THOMAS LAIRD. ROYAL LIBRARY, COPENHAGEN.
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Flora and fauna are fast replacing bricks and mortar as the main selling features of today’s landmark building projects, as green architecture strikes a chord with concreteand-glass-weary city-dwellers. Words by ZOE DARE HALL
uch is our innate need for greenery that property developers, designers and the new stars of the show, landscape architects, will leave no stone unturned to give us a connection to nature in the most urban of settings. Living walls and sky gardens help sell new highend developments around the world. The Printing House in New York’s West Village has a landscaped garden of growing walls, sculptural benches and fowerbeds that stretches an entire block – exclusively for the use of those who live in the townhouses, which start at $13.1m. And in Gibraltar, such was the desirability of the rotund waterfront Ocean Spa Plaza development – whose vertical garden covers 70 per cent of the circumference of the frst six foors, attracting an ecosystem of wildlife that’s currently lacking on the Rock – that all 125 apartments sold out within 36 hours. 146 Baku.
The High Line elevated park in Chelsea, New York.
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1. Pedestrians walk along New York’s High Line, which inspired (3) the Peckham Coal Line in south London. 2. The Printing House in New York’s West Village. 4. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London. 5, 6 & 7. Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport, now a public park. 8. A rendering of the proposed Garden Bridge, London.
London, too, is going to great lengths to bring greenery to places you may least expect it. One Soho offce building has a “living spiral staircase”, with a “whole world living and breathing” in that simple journey from A to B, says its designer Paul Cocksedge. Meanwhile, a distinct new vocabulary is emerging – including ‘pocket parks’, ‘parklets’ and ‘piazzettas’ – to describe the green areas of public realm that London developers are providing alongside their luxury apartment complexes. In Baku, the Danish design frm Rebar and Scandinavian art collective N55 found an even more extreme way of bringing greenery to the masses – on the back of bicycles. Their eye-catching, pedal-powered mini parks were moved around the city at 2013’s Public Art Festival, creating new micro areas of green for people to enjoy.
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In many world cities today, some of the most innovative emerging landmarks – those that have the power not just to impress with their creativity and beauty but to change our daily lives – aren’t glass and steel skyscrapers but green spaces. Some may be considered ‘legacy’ projects pushed by local mayors as a way of leaving their mark on the landscape, but others are genuinely created for – and sometimes by – the community. Take the Peckham Coal Line in south London. Inspired by New York City’s High Line, a park created on a disused railway line in Chelsea in 2009, local residents are 148 Baku.
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seeking to create a 90om-long park taking in old railway coal sidings to form a natural, green link between the area’s two currently detached high streets. And then there’s Berlin’s Tempelhofer Park, a former airfeld that was reclaimed by the city in 2008 as a huge, open public space with cycling, skating and jogging trails and picnic areas. “Like London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Tempelhofer Park will take time to grow and mature, but it’s the people’s park. That land could have been used for property development, but the citizens decided to make it a public park and there’s life within it in the existing airport buildings that have become offces and studios,” says Lisa Finlay, group manager at Heatherwick
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“LIKE LONDON’S QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK, BERLIN’S TEMPELHOFER WILL TAKE TIME TO MATURE, BUT IT’S THE PEOPLE’S PARK. THAT LAND COULD HAVE BEEN USED FOR PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT.”
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Studio, the London-based design and architecture practice established by Thomas Heatherwick in 1994 and now leading the way in the world’s most exciting green architecture projects. Heatherwick came to national prominence when he designed the Olympic Cauldron for London’s 2012 Games. But his vision is even more dramatic in his design for the proposed Garden Bridge – spanning the Thames from Inner Temple to the South Bank. The plans incorporate fve different planting zones, ranging from a feel of wilderness on the south side to a very different horticultural style as you head towards Temple. “The bridge will be a meeting place – a place to stop and pause as you cycle or walk to work and one that offers
it part of people’s lives. It gets taken over and given back to the public, changing their memories of this space,” says Finlay, who is also working on Moganshan in Shanghai, bringing public green terraces to every level of two tall, concrete residential towers. Far from creating “trophy” landmarks, she adds, her studio’s work is about “trying to put public green spaces in the foreground of cities as places that anyone can experience. Green spaces are becoming far more prominent on the planning agenda now – they’re more integral to projects – and our role is to work out how we can squeeze them in and make them work.” No territory is off limits for today’s green architects and ‘greening the desert’ is a challenge a number are taking on. Heatherwick has plans for a sunken park in Abu Dhabi’s Arabian desert. Al Fayah Park will be a vast oasis beneath a 20m-high canopy that resembles the desert’s cracked surface, to include a library, mosque, outdoor cinema and performance spaces. In Qatar, London-based landscape architecture practice Gustafson Porter is
1. something quite contained and unexpected. It will allow people to look at the city from a different angle,” says Finlay. Unlike the gleaming new residential or commercial towers that are emerging in London, the garden bridge – like all ‘green infrastructure’, to use the buzzwords among today’s landscape architects – promises to allow everyone a chance to enjoy it. Heatherwick is also the designer behind Pier55 in New York, 1ha of rolling landscape
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“GREENING OUR CITIES HELPS ENCOURAGE BIODIVERSITY, HELPS TO CONTROL RAINWATER RUN-OFF AND PREVENT FLOODING, BUT, MORE IMPORTANTLY, CONTRIBUTES TO WELLBEING.” that will replace the dilapidated old pier on the Hudson River with planting and performance venues built over a cluster of mushroom-shaped columns. Due for completion in late 2018/early 2019, the pier is funded mainly by the Diller– von Furstenburg Family Foundation. “Seeing a space like this transformed makes 150 Baku.
Architectural renderings of (1) the Rathbone Square public garden development in London, (2 & 3) Central Park in Valencia, (4) Pier55 in New York, and (5, 6 & 7) Marina One, in Singapore’s new financial district, Marina Bay. 8. A groundskeeper tends to the garden on the High Line, Manhattan, New York.
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designing a two kilometre-long seafront promenade in Seef Lusail, north of Qatar, which will include four major gardens and plazas, streetscapes and extensive planting along the new light rail corridor. Another of Gustafson Porter’s major projects is Marina One in Singapore, the city’s frst development of its type to integrate soft landscape into the fabric of the building. Marina One’s Green Heart will see an elevated public garden between four high-rise towers, with sky terraces, waterfalls and lush vegetation – and the challenge there will be in dealing with the hot, humid climate. “Singapore is ahead of most of the rest of the world in greening its environment and buildings, and its tropical climate means that plants grow exuberantly. But the challenge is to create outdoor spaces that are comfortable to be in,” says Mary Bowman, partner at Gustafson Porter, who are also embarking on the frst phase of the 23ha Central Park in Valencia and a new public garden in Rathbone Square, off Oxford Street in London. “Developers, city authorities and clients all recognize that well-designed public space that includes signifcant areas of planting can bring huge benefts to the urban environment,” says Bowman. “Greening our cities helps encourage biodiversity, helps to control rainwater run-off and prevent fooding, but, more 151 Baku.
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importantly, contributes to health and wellbeing.” They are issues that every city faces – along with overcrowding, pollution and the fact that private gardens in cities are a luxury few can afford – so it’s little wonder that everywhere is getting on the ‘greening’ bandwagon. Zaryadye Park from Diller Scofdio + Renfro, the people who brought New York its High Line park, will be the frst new park in Moscow for 50 years, bringing “wild urbanism” to the city centre. Seoul has its Skygarden, the proposed transformation of a one kilometre-long stretch of elevated highway next to Central Station with hundreds of species of trees, shrubs and fowers to create a natural space that the public can enjoy. And in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamese architects Vo Trong Nhgia have come up with plans to link three 22-storey residential towers with planted rooftops gardens and bridges and a series of waterways. These may be new solutions, but our need to connect with nature is as old as the hills. “Horticultural therapy – based
“PLANNERS NOW OFTEN SHOW FAR MORE INTEREST IN A DEVELOPMENT’S GREEN SPACE THAN ITS INTERIORS. GREEN SPACE IS LESS ABOUT SIMPLY BEING AN AMENITY NOW AND MORE ABOUT PLACEMAKING.” on the premise that we all have an innate and deep bond with nature and using it to help us overcome illness, whether mental or physical – has been talked about for 200 years,” says Huw Morgan, director of Camlins, the landscape architects behind Embassy Gardens and Wardian, both Ballymore developments in London that will bring a splash of green to their surroundings. Embassy Gardens in Battersea will include a densely planted ravine (and foating sky swimming pool between two towers), while Wardian, in Canary Wharf, has been designed entirely around its 152 Baku.
3. botanical theme. The name itself comes from the Wardian cases used at the height of the British Empire to transport plants, and the residential towers will include large sky-garden balconies in every apartment and a landscaped public plaza. “It always used to be that the architect was the star of a scheme, but increasingly we landscape designers have become vital to the process. Planners now often show far more interest in a development’s green space than its interiors. Green space is less about simply being an amenity now and more about placemaking,” says Morgan. In working with property developers to provide a ‘story’ behind the development, Morgan says he has seen the impact even a small green space can have on would-be property buyers. “We designed Embassy Gardens’ marketing suite to look like the development in miniature, with a glass cube set on the cusp of a forest and meadow. People have said it feels like being elevated on a catwalk above dense greenery, and the dwell time is phenomenal. People don’t want to leave,” Morgan comments. And where once most public green areas were funded by local authorities – “which 4.
means they tended to be little more than lawns, because the maintenance costs were lower,” according to Morgan – now most new public green spaces are privately funded as part of a developer’s commitment to the local community. As landscape designers start to lead the way in city masterplanning, celebrated architects/interior designers such as Piet Boon, whose work includes 101 Wall Street, have added a new string to their bow by collaborating with their green counterparts. Boon often teams up with his fellow Dutchman Piet Oudolf on projects such as Huys at 404 Park Avenue South in New York, where Boon turned the old offce building into 58 luxury apartments and Oudolf designed the rooftop garden using the same plants he chose for New York’s High Line. “What you have to remember with green spaces is that you are dealing with a living thing. This takes design to a different level. Piet Oudolf’s landscaping creations are true living pieces of art, constantly changing and surprising,” says Boon. These new natural spaces in the heart of our cities can be pocket-sized or stretch for miles. But what Heatherwick Studio’s Lisa Finlay wants is to “give more exposure to greenery”. With their sky gardens and wild fower meadows, their linear parks and tropical oases, today’s green architects are doing just that, bringing a whole new meaning to the concept of the urban jungle. PAUL BARBERA. PAUL COCKSEDGE STUDIO/RESOLUTION PROPERTIES. ©MVRDV.
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1. The Piet Oudolfdesigned rooftop garden at Huys, 404 Park Avenue South in New York. 2 & 6. Wardian, Canary Wharf, London. 3. The green spiral staircase in Soho’s Ampersand Building, London. 4. The sky pool connecting two towers at Embassy Gardens in Battersea, London. 5. An architectural rendering of Seoul’s proposed Skygarden.
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THE BUZZ :
A World Apart
Baku’s two newest openings couldn’t be more different, but what they do share is a passion for comfort food with heaps of character.
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WORDS BY FRANCESCA PEAK.
Noosh and M’EAT
It’s the eternal dilemma for discerning diners – is it best to stick to familiar comforts in the form of traditional, local dishes, or treat your taste buds to something more exotic with a spot of foreign fare? One thing’s for certain: the BEAT Group isn’t making the decision any easier, with the recent opening of two new restaurants in the heart of Baku that pit the cuisines of Azerbaijan and America against each other in a culinary contest. Noosh’s foor-to-ceiling windows may look out over the city’s business district, but don’t be put off – the atmosphere is far from stuffy or corporate, with a classic and minimalist interior providing a calm haven from the bustling world outside. Classic Azerbaijani dishes such as plov, qutabs and dolma are the stars of the show, with sturgeon (fried ‘sadj’ style in a special pan) and veal also highlights. Be sure to save room to indulge in a few Azerbaijani sweet treats after your meal. Over in the centre of town, venture through the doors of M’EAT and you’ll enter a rather more carnivorous world
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of cuisine – the burgundy leather sofas, timber-clad walls and, er, meat hooks dangling from the ceiling create a suitably visceral ambience. Settle yourself at the expansive distressed oak bar for a predinner Long Island iced tea and watch the trolley of steak weave between the tables.
Diners select their cut of prime US beef before watching it being cooked to succulent perfection in the open kitchen – vegetarians need not apply. This is American indulgence at its fnest.
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1 & 2. The exterior of M’EAT, where dishes include veal roulade. 3 & 4. Noosh’s herbstuffed qutabs, and the restaurant’s dining room.
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MY ART:
Well-dressed Walls
With art, as with wardrobe must-haves, Ruth Chapman, co-founder of Matchesfashion.com, has learnt to trust her instincts, Lauren Cochrane discovers. Portrait by PHILIP SINDEN Is art something you have always enjoyed? I grew up in a very bohemian family. My grandmother would collect things like beautiful pottery. I remember one of the frst artists I loved painted ballet dancers – not Degas sadly, far cheesier than that. But then I quickly grew into a more contemporary taste. One of the frst pieces Tom [Ruth’s husband and co-founder of Matchesfashion.com] and I bought was a portrait of a man and a woman on a bicycle going really fast by Peter McLaren. It’s proved something of a metaphor for our life. Do you both share a passion for art? Defnitely. Art has been woven into our lives. The children have taken it up, too – our 15-year-old does wonderful paintings. Tom works on all this fnancial stuff but he has a highly visual brain, even if he can’t draw. We often buy art for each other as a gift.
Above: Ruth Chapman at home. Right (from left): Lovers on a Bicycle (1990) by Peter McLaren; The Bathers (1923) by Paule Vézelay; Untitled (Kissing Couple) (2003) by Chris Ofli.
Where do you usually buy? We go to auctions – we got four beautiful Chris Oflis that way and they now hang in our sitting room. We often see things that are out of our price range – I think I’d go crazy if money was no object. I would buy Craigie Aitchison or Barry Reigate if I could. And German art – there’s some kind of creative renaissance in art going on there, and in fashion, too. And what do you have your eye on next? We still have wall space to fll – the dining room has a huge Abigail Lane work with trapeze artists but could use another big piece. I’d like a smaller work by Natasha Law. I like our house to be full of interesting discoveries from around the world.
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TATE IMAGES. © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES.
How does a piece grab you? We have the same approach to art that we do when buying fashion. It’s about an emotional response. We splashed out recently on some sketches by Paule Vézelay, including a nude and a circus. If we see something we love, we tend to do what we can to buy it.
ALL IN THE MIND:
Breathe Easy
WORDS BY FRANCESCA PEAK.
Separating your cobra from your upward-facing dog takes time and patience, but the physical and emotional benefts of yoga are well worth the effort. Illustration by JONNY WAN
he ancient physical, mental and spiritual practice may have been around since 5 BCE, but in the past few decades it’s really become the exercise of choice among the well-heeled in the Western world. The word ‘yoga’ comes from the Sanskrit ‘yuj’, meaning ‘to unite’, and its aim is to focus the mind and body on a single selfess practice, encompassing wisdom and self-awareness. It has been in development for
thousands of years, and has spread from northern India to the West. The most common version, hatha yoga, has been overshadowed by more exotic strains in recent years. Ashtanga focuses on maintaining each posture for fve or so breaths, and concentrating on your bandhas, the focal points of contraction and relaxation on your body. Kundalini involves meditation and chanting, focusing on alignment, while hot yoga is a sweaty affair combining detoxifying heat with energizing postures. We may have reached peak yoga with the frst International Yoga Day on 21 June 2015,
when 35,985 people joined forces to break the record for the biggest yoga class, and a glance at the number of yoga selfes on Instagram suggests that practitioners are keen to be seen doing it. Yoga pants may be a controversial topic but the practice itself certainly isn’t. And rest assured, if you’re not part of the yoga set – where have you been? – it’s never too late to strike a warrior pose. Just remember to breathe.
Just chill, yogi.
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THE ARTIST: y interest in photography came about by looking at the world around me from an early age – at the rug hanging over my cot, a stormy autumn sky, Italian neorealist flms, the architecture of the Shirvanshah’s Palace in Baku, and so on; and discovering the work of Edward Weston, Ralph Gibson and Duane Michals. I saw everything that was fowing by me, everything we call life. Then all these images began to be captured in my photographs. It’s diffcult to describe my style. With each new series I try to change the aesthetics of the images, but the essence of the photographs, their documentary nature, is unchanged. The main thing is the integrity of the content and how it conveys a certain truth to the viewer – that’s what determines the style. As for choosing a subject, I’m not very consistent in my subject matter. I’m currently interested in the wild landscapes of Gobustan in southeast Azerbaijan. There are no power lines, houses, industrial buildings or people. Just rocks in space. But I also get inspiration from people, books, music, cycling and… there are just too many things to mention. I mull over these, let my imagination fow, capture them and then forget them! And the rest is like a fairy tale: somewhere, a magic wand is waved and suddenly I see what I have been looking for and photograph it. Back at my studio in Baku, I print my photographs on paper – I hate images projected digitally on a screen; something essentially photographic dies in them. My works have been shown in more than 20 countries including Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, the UK, France, Italy, Mongolia and Germany. And in 2016 I want to hold a retrospective exhibition to mark my 60th birthday. It’s been my pleasure to work with other artists over the years, including artists at Yarat contemporary art organization in Baku. It’s great to have such a platform to work from. And my favourite artist? It has to be the Czech photographer Josef Koudelka. My friendship with him has strongly infuenced me as a human being, as a citizen and as a photographer.
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Going with the Flow
Nothing escapes the eye of Azerbaijani photographer Sanan Aleskerov as he documents the diverse world around him. Photography by NATAVAN VAHABOVA
Opposite: Sanan Aleskerov. This page, photographs by Aleskerov: (from top) two images of Gobustan (2015), Angel. Baku (2005) and Sitara above the Sky. Novkhani (2007).
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HISTORY LESSON:
Gobustan
One of the richest concentrations of prehistoric rock art to be seen anywhere in the world is in Azerbaijan, at the Gobustan Preserve. Illustration by ANDY LOVELL
Why is Gobustan important? There are several reasons, which its lengthy offcial name, Gobustan National HistoricalArtistic Preserve, embraces. The rock carvings are of great archaeological and artistic signifcance – indeed, within the rock art community, which is larger than you might suppose, they are of global importance. Hence the site’s listing as a Unesco World Heritage site in 2007, and the excellent website about it set up by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the preserve (gobustan.si.edu). 162 Baku.
So what’s to see there? A lot: the three fat-topped mountains in the preserve, from which you can see the Caspian and Baku in the distance, are covered with large, loose boulders as a result of earthquakes and erosion. These rocks look a bit like huge dice that have been scattered across the slopes and, like dice, many of them have fat sides which over the millennia since the Stone Age have enticed humans to make their mark. While the site is no graffti-covered downtown LA, it shows that a smooth, blank surface has always been irresistible to the human instinct for representing the world in one way or another. And the extent and variety of these rock carvings, or petroglyphs, are astonishing. Outline depictions of animals such as the auroch, a kind of ox now extinct, big cats and gazelles are frequently seen here, but there are some rarities, too, such as a camel and what is thought to be a dolphin (showing how high the Caspian’s sea level was at one
time). As you’d expect, carvings of human fgures are pervasive, those of women especially, who are shown as tattooed, naked or in ritual dress, or pregnant. One carving has two lines of humans apparently dancing. That’s the historical and artistic bit of the name. What about the preservation part? Since its discovery in the 1930s, the site has become popular with tourists, who now come here in their thousands. So now there is a new museum with high-tech interactive displays and backlit explanatory texts (contrasting with old-fashioned tableaux of ferocious-looking Paleolithic men hunting). And to conserve the petroglyphs, toothpaste has to be removed that was once used to help make them stand out from the rock surface.
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THE ILLUSTRATOR :
Sea Life
By Leyla Aliyeva
Mexico’s Contemporary Art Fair. Mexico City. Centro Banamex / Hall D. www.zonamaco.com info@zonamaco.com
Birthday Bash
THE CIRCUIT
Celebrating Baku magazine’s anniversary with a private view. Providing an escape from the throng at Frieze London, Baku and Opera Gallery joined forces to celebrate four years of the magazine and showcase a solo exhibition by Catalan artist Lita Cabellut. Friends of the magazine both old and new sipped champagne and traded gossip on what’s hot – and what’s decidedly not – on the art scene. Cabellut’s take on beauty and femininity was on display in stunning form in her large-scale paintings, while her fower sculptures dotted around the room were a reminder of nature’s fragility. A welcome reprieve from the week’s arty madness among a suitably fashionable crowd.
Lita Cabellut, Leyla Aliyeva & Jean-David Malat.
Tim im W Wade e&L Lydia, Countess of Limerick. Darius Sanai & Simon de Pury.
Gilles Dyan & Jerome Aboucay ca a. cay
ANTHONY HARVEY/GETTY.
Kryss Th Thykier. er er.
Ari na Zeric & Francesca Peak. Arija
Michael Flatley & Niamh O’Brien.
Julian Melchiori.
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THE CIRCUIT
Love, Baku
Premiere of one flm with many stories. To the Heydar Aliyev Centre, where the flm Baku, I love you made its debut, attended by a host of actors, directors and fans. Divided into 10 parts, each led by a different director, the flm highlights Baku’s diverse cultural heritage and pays homage to the city’s inhabitants, whose lives are portrayed through a series of stories. Guests enjoyed an exclusive screening and told tales of a city both old and new.
Bahram Bagirzade & Mebud Meherremov. v v.
Alexander Fodor & Magerrem Musay usa ev. usay v v.
Olga Shabanova, v va, Elgar Safat & Fidan Sady dykh dy ykhova. v va.
Egor Konchalovsky.
Nadir Machanov & Raid Abbasov. v v.
Smile, Please Images of Azerbaijan on show in Paris.
Reza Deghati & the First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva.
Jean-François Marcel, Reza Deghati, Elchin Amirbekov, v, Jean-François Legaret v & Carla Aregoni.
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VUGAR AMRULLAYEV.
On a sunny day in the French capital, the photography exhibition ‘Azerbaijan: Land of Tolerance’ opened at the City Hall in the city’s 1st arrondissement. Reza Deghati, award-winning photographer of Azerbaijani origin, visited the country over a period of years, documenting the everyday lives of the people there and the marriage of modern life with the country’s ancient customs.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
GALLERIES: CONTEMPORARY, MODERN, MARKER: THE PHILIPPINES GLOBAL ART FORUM • THE ABRAAJ GROUP ART PRIZE • ART DUBAI PROJECTS: COMMISSIONS, RESIDENCIES, FILM, RADIO • EDUCATION: THE SHEIKHA MANAL LITTLE ARTISTS PROGRAM, CAMPUS ART DUBAI, FORUM FELLOWS • ARTDUBAI.AE
THE CIRCUIT Rasim Aliyev. v v.
Intigam Babay a ev, ay v, Adalyatt V v Veliyev & Firudin Gurbanov. v v.
Raise a Glass Rashad Mehdiyev & Anar Alakbarov. v v.
Omar Eldarov. v v.
Robert Cekuta.
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Kha am Abdinov. Khayy v v.
Oya Ergun.
Fakhriya Khalafova v va & Fidan Gadzhieyva. yv yva.
Hennessy makes a mark with art.
As part of its 250th birthday world tour, House of Hennessy paid Baku a visit, partnering up with the Museum of Modern Art to display the work of renowned Azerbaijani artist Rashad Mehdiyev. The artist’s striking sculptures and paintings were complemented by the equally dramatic setting of the museum, through which guests could wander until late, absorbed by the intricate beauty of Mehdiyev’s work.
Sabina Shikhlinskay a a, Jahangir Selimkhanov ay & Liana na V Vezirova. v va.
FARMAN RUSTAM.
Jamila Iskandar Boisson.
WHO, WHAT, WHERE:
Movers and Shakers
Rachel Rose If you haven’t at least heard mention of Rachel Rose in the past few months, you may be living under a rock. This video artist is defying the standards of emerging celebrity typically reserved for male abstract painters. The 28-year-old, whose often site-specifc work cleverly uses flm to explore humans and animals and the spaces they inhabit, had simultaneous solo exhibitions on view in autumn 2015 at the Serpentine Gallery, London (with Palisades, above), the Whitney Museum, New York, and Castello di Rivoli in Turin, making her something of an overnight sensation. Although she is likely to be catching up in the studio this spring, expect to see and hear more – this rare talent is not going anywhere.
2 Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba Contemporary African art gets its own dedicated magazine.
3 Misako & Jeffrey Rosen The Rosens are bringing new artists to town. Misako and Jeffrey Rosen of Tokyo’s Misako & Rosen gallery are revitalizing the contemporary Japanese art scene for emerging artists. Besides the contributions of the gallery’s exciting international programme, such as work by Californian artist Will Rogan (above), they have founded New Tokyo Contemporaries, a network of like-minded galleries across the city. According to the Rosens, curatorial context is what breeds a strong market, and that’s what they are focusing their energy on. 172 Baku.
In 2013 Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba founded the magazine Contemporary And (C&), a platform for international perspectives on contemporary African art. In just a few years they’ve made an impact as experts in the feld, and this spring are curating the Focus section of the 2016 Armory Show, titled ‘African Perspectives’, including Namsa Leuba’s Zulu Kids series (main picture).
COURTESY RACHEL ROSE AND PILAR CORRIAS GALLERY. KEI OKANO. COURTESY MISAKO & ROSEN, TOKYO. COURTESY ART TWENTY ONE, LAGOS. COURTESY BENJAMIN RENTER. COURTESY OF THE MOVING MUSEUM AND MOHAMMED BIN SHABIB. LAURA STEIRER. IMAGES FROM ‘MINA STONE: COOKING FOR ARTISTS’ PUBLISHED BY KIITO-SAN.
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New ideas, new young artists, curators at the outset of their careers, even a chef to the star players – these are the people to watch in the art world next year, says Jarrett Gregory.
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The Moving Museum You just can’t pin a good museum down, especially one as ambitious as this. Founded by Aya Mousawi and Simon Sakhai, The Moving Museum is a nomadic nonproft that has staged ambitious projects in Dubai, Istanbul and London, including residencies, public programmes and exhibitions. Eschewing the need for any fxed location, its founders have truly thought outside the box, proposing an alternative model that considers globalization and the expansive possibility of public engagement while embracing the importance of site even in today’s digitalized world.
5 Mina Stone Artists with their very own private chef? Who knew? This Greek private chef has become a bit of a deity in the art world. She started cooking for Elizabeth Peyton and then for Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, where she continues to prepare simple Mediterranean-inspired meals at their opening dinners. For the past six years she has also been working for Urs Fischer, cooking family-style lunches for the artist and his studio (main picture). In 2015, Fischer published Stone’s cookbook Cooking for Artists, illustrated by grateful artists (including Cassandra MacLeod, above). The book is now on its third reprint in less than a year. Stone’s understanding of casual, warm gatherings and delicious food promises to revolutionize the art world’s standards for dining.
6 Leonardo Bigazzi A young talent who promises a new style of curation, one that puts artists above presentation. This innovative young curator has been working at Lo Schermo dell’Arte in Florence, a project that bridges art and cinema, and has now been named as the curator of the Museo Marino Marini in the same city. Thoughtful in his approach, Bigazzi promises to usher in a style of curating that is driven by artists and relationships rather than overproduction. The result will certainly be quality, with plenty of quantity, too. As his career inevitably catapults him into more projects, viewers will only stand to beneft.
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ENDANGERED NO. 3:
Caucasian Leopard
The leopard, an instantly recognizable symbol of Azerbaijan’s natural heritage, is now on camera in a plan to monitor its conservation status. Illustration by JAMES GROVER
Found: The Caucasian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) was once widespread across the Caucasus region. It is now restricted to the mountains and foothills of northern Azerbaijan and the southern ranges near the border with Iran. The leopard as a species is recognized for its resilience and its adaptability to whatever environment it fnds itself in, and the Caucasian sub-species is no different. It preys mostly on wild goats and moufon, a wild sheep. The WWF’s estimate that possibly fewer than 15 Caucasian leopards remain in Azerbaijan is a stark reminder of how precarious the creature’s status is.
Under threat because: The leopard is the most persecuted large cat in the world. The biggest challenges facing its survival are poaching and the fragmentation of its natural habitat keeping potential mates apart (due to economic development). Raising awareness of its ‘Endangered’ status on the IUCN Red List via public information drives is a key component in the fght against poaching.
Outlook: Thanks to the 2014 signing of a cooperation agreement between leading conservation organization Panthera and the Azerbaijanbased environmental campaigning body IDEA, a leopard-monitoring programme is now in place – and a breeding pair has already been spotted on camera in Nakhchivan.
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Tabula Rasa OLGA ROH 176 Baku.
I last visited Baku in November to celebrate the 75th birthday of Ruhangiz Kasumova, the renowned Azerbaijani composer. The country’s celebration of its cultural achievement is so important and really sets Azerbaijan apart. Everyone I have met in Baku is so generous and culturally curious; there is such a diverse range of art, theatre and dance. This artistic, social and national mix is the DNA of the country, making it a wonderfully unique place. My fashion label, Rohmir, is a perfect match for the aesthetic of
Baku: the collections combine century-old traditions with modern designs, which I see even more every time I visit this vibrant city. The women who wear our clothes do so to fnd their individual style, encouraging a confdence that is so strong in Baku. We have boutiques in London, Berlin, Hong Kong and Zurich, but I would love to be part of the Port Baku shopping mall – watch this space!
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Olga Roh is creative director of Rohmir. rohmir.com
Olga Roh with her own painting of Inchdrewer Castle near Banff in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, which she bought in 2014 and plans to restore.
REX SHUTTERSTOCK.
was born in Moscow and have known people from Azerbaijan all my life, and I’ve had the chance to watch Baku change and grow as a city over the years. It’s diffcult not to love: there is so much to do and see, from the romantic Boulevard to the historic Maiden Tower. More recently the Zaha Hadiddesigned Heydar Aliyev Centre and the Flame Towers have made it a shining example of modernity and beauty. In particular, the Crystal Hall is a magical music venue, a truly unforgettable place.