The King of Black + Q&A

“The King of Black,” a 24-minute film is an adaptation of a chapter of the Haft Paykar, the romantic epic of the 12th century, by Nizami of Ganja. Haft Paykar or Seven Beauties is an allegorical romance, which takes self-knowledge as the essential path to human enlightenment as its central theme.
Over the past few years, Azari has successfully taken historical and traditional work from the past and merging it with a contemporary context. In both “The Day of the Last Judgment” (2009) and Untitled (2012) videos, Azari uses Persian miniature and coffee house paintings as the backdrop for contemporary scenes of conflict, war and political horrors. 
In his new one-channel video projection, Azari continues to merge the past with the present. The vivid and richly colored film features live action set on a background of classical Persian miniature paintings. Additionally, aspects such as the characters’ customs and mannerisms are treated in contemporary times while the painted background depicts the historical times. Conceptually, this merging of present and past bridges the historical gap and makes the Twelfth-Century poem resonate in modern times.
Suad Garayeva writes in the catalogue essay, “The film depicting human imperfection is layered with meaning in the best of Eastern Sufi traditions. The striving for an ideal is juxtaposed with the Western attraction to Exoticism, as the scenes reference both the Islamic conception of Heaven and the nineteenth-century French Orientalist paintings of harems. Thus, Azari reconstructs the persisting historical prejudices and raises awareness of those who tried to subvert those very preconceptions as early as eight hundred years ago. Feeling liberated from the boundaries imposed on the artist by the film industry in the medium of video art, Azari at the same time breaches the thresholds of painting and film, by treating his projection screens as stand-alone canvases.”
Language : English