Aesthetic Incongruity: Art and Humor in Post-Independence Azerbaijan

Abstract

<p>How do artworks emerging from post-Soviet Azerbaijan activate humor in a manner that translates locally, and within a globalized market? To consider the operations of visually driven humor within a global commodity regime, I propose using the framework of aesthetic incongruity. While the average consumer strives for consistency (aesthetic congruity) across a range of behaviors, a group of projects realized by artists Orkhan Huseynov, Rashad Alakbarov, Farid Rasulov, and several others, relish the incongruous within the everyday, cosmopolitan life model. Within their work, common objects and idioms are combined into absurd and creative pairings that are both internationally legible and steeped in local knowledge. What is striking about this intersection of aesthetic incongruity and humor is the way in which it caters to multiple viewer positions, transforming the ordinary into the unexpected, and challenging one to question normative operations and their accompanying visual and linguistic rhetoric.<br></p>