“Flowing Memory” exhibition opens in Baku’s historic underground bath

As part of the “Fly to Baku. Art Weekend: Sense the Future NOW” festival, a collective exhibition titled “Flowing Memory” has opened in a 17th-century underground bath located in Baku’s Old City (Icherisheher). The exhibition offers a contemporary reinterpretation of Azerbaijan’s traditional bathhouse culture.

The project features works by Honored Artist Sabina Shikhlinskaya and young talents Nargiz Asgarova, Aliya Bayramova, and Timur Zaripov, Azernews reports.

According to curator Mansura Mammadaliyeva, the exhibition not only reflects traditions but also explores the multilayered meanings of bath culture in Azerbaijan through the lens of water, memory, and purification.

Sabina Shikhlinskaya presented her video installation “Hamam”, originally created in 2006 and successfully exhibited in about 15 countries over the years. The piece recreates the atmosphere of 16th-century men’s baths and pre-prayer purification rituals, accompanied by musical fragments from People’s Artist and composer Faraj Garayev’s “Nostalgia” album, creating a meditative harmony between sound and visual rhythm.

The artist interprets the bathhouse as a transitional space between sin and purity, where water cleanses not only the body but also the spirit.

Nargiz Asgarova’s nano video-art piece “Be Like Water” examines the cultural and symbolic dimensions of water as both the origin of life and a vessel of cultural continuity. In her work, the bathhouse serves as a ritual space of renewal and memory preservation, where digital technology underscores water’s transformative and mnemonic power.

In “Beyond the Flow,” artists Aliya Bayramova and Timur Zaripov explore the cyclical cleansing and renewal of memory through visual montages of water and nature. Each image briefly appears, dissolving like a memory—symbolizing both purification and rebirth. Subtle ambient sounds accompany the visuals, inviting viewers into a delicate space between remembering and forgetting, where cleansing becomes an act of release and continuity.

The “Flowing Memory” exhibition is part of the “Fly to Baku. Art Weekend: Sense the Future NOW” festival, held from October 31 to November 2. The festival unites art, culture, and ecology, and is organized by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and IDEA Public Union in partnership with the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan. The project’s author and initiator is Leyla Aliyeva, Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and founder of IDEA.