West Hollywood Hosts "Nazım & Friends" Art Exhibition Featuring Azerbaijani Artists

The opening of the "Nazım & Friends" exhibition took place at the Long Hall gallery in Plummer Park, West Hollywood, bringing together the works of six artists representing diverse artistic movements, schools, and generations.

The cultural project was organized with the support of the City of West Hollywood, the Consulate General of Azerbaijan in Los Angeles, and the Naum Reznik Russian-Language Public Library.

At the center of the exhibition is Baku-born artist Nazim Hajiyev, whose creative career spans more than four decades across painting and cinematography. His extensive background as a production designer infuses his canvases with a cinematic atmosphere of understated suspense beyond a single frame, revealing to the viewer a delicate balance of forms and symbols open to dialogue and interpretation.

The showcase also features intricately detailed works by Arzu Khalilova, a member of the Union of Artists of Azerbaijan; graphic and miniature surrealist compositions by Fidan Kim; photographic works by Los Angeles-based, Baku-born photographer Oleg Volovik (Alec Wolvec); alongside contributions by Anna Milshtein and Edward Goff.

Arzu Khalilova's compositions unite color and black-and-white elements in a way that generates simultaneous tension and harmony between them. The depicted reality remains recognizable, yet never fully static.

Working with contrast, symbolism, associations, and unexpected visual combinations, Khalilova sidesteps direct linear narrative. Her imagery conveys emotional states without defining them definitively, allowing viewers to access each piece through their own perception.

Born in Baku and educated at the Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Arts, Fidan Kim integrates elements of graphics, orientalism, surrealism, ornamental motifs, and miniature painting into her practice, transforming dreams into the foundation of her creative process to construct a deeply personal symbolic vocabulary marked by a quiet sense of mystery.

Photographer Oleg Volovik (Alec Wolvec), who was born in Baku and has lived in Los Angeles since 1992, bridges both cities within his visual perspective, using composition, light, and memory to seize fleeting glimpses of the everyday world where ordinary reality strikes an unexpected equilibrium and shifts into something more ambiguous between observation and recollection.

Structured as a dialogue of contrasts that bridges Azerbaijani, European, and American cultural currents, the exhibition will run in Los Angeles through October 12, 2026.

Photo credit: Joshua Barash

N.Tebrizli