There are very few literary figures in cultural history who have distinguished themselves as well as Essad Bey, born in 1905 as Lew Nussimbaum, in building bridges between the Orient and the Occident. As the author of the Azerbaijani-Georgian love story “Ali and Nino” he later became known under his pseudonym Kurban Said.

Essad Bey grew up multilingual in Baku — Russian, German, Azerbaijani — and experienced a city in its first oil boom at the beginning of the 20TH century: Back then, Baku produced almost half of the world’s crude oil. Oriental splendor stands in striking contrast to stark social differences, workers’ uprisings and revolutionary turmoil. While fleeing Baku after the October Revolution, the author turned out to be a cosmopolitan border crosser: Central Asia, Persia, Georgia and Turkey were the stops on his way to Berlin, where he converted to Islam, wrote no fewer than 18 books and was soon celebrated as an expert on the Orient. In 1936 he was banned from publishing in Germany, whereupon he emigrated to Italy, where in 1942 he died impoverished and abandoned by everyone: his final ordeal.

Essad Bey’s main work “Oil and Blood in the Orient”, in which truth and fiction are artfully interwoven, now serves as a source of inspiration for the artists in this exhibition.

The usual, Eurocentric perspective is reversed by looking at world history from the east. And modernity, which bursts in with sudden force, is held up again and again in his stories by the pride, obstinacy and awareness of tradition of the peoples who persist in the mountains and valleys of the Caucasus. In his pathos-free, yet elegant narrative style, the sadness about the downfall of an entire epoch always resonates.

This time we don’t intend to approach Essad Bey through literary means, as usual, but with visual arts and film. This will give us a fresh access to his oeuvre, whereby the spatial experience opens up a new aesthetic dimension.

For contemporary artists and filmmakers, “Oil and Blood in the Orient” is a poetic resonance chamber which, in addition to historical self-assurance, opens up new possibilities for analyzing and evaluating the present: Where do Azerbaijan and the Caucasus stand today in the centuries-old dialogue between East and West? Which aesthetic and artistic means are called for when dealing with the historical heritage and its language? And finally: which of Essad Bey’s many visions are still awaiting completion?

LIST OF ARTISTS

Agdes Baghirzade, Baku

Orkhan Huseynov, Baku

Ismail Iman & Sabina Shikhlinskaya, Baku

Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Berlin

Alexandre Michon, Kharkiv and Baku

Thomas Rentmeister, Berlin

CURATOR

Alfons Hug, Goethe Zentrum in Baku

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