In February 2021 the artist Qafar Rzayev created the video titled The Story of Boy with White Bed Sheet within the Studio Program at BAI | Berlin Artist Residency, Art School, Arts Incubator, and Live Online Courses & Classes. His participation was supported & funded by the Goethe-Centre Baku & Goethe-Institut Georgia.
The Story of Boy with White Bed Sheet, 2021
Video (mp4), 0:40 min.
“It started in early April of 2020 when the pandemic necessitated quarantine both all over the world and Azerbaijan, my homeland. I couldn’t accept anything around, such a mess it was! Losing my freedom, losing all the opportunities that I had. I was in bed all day. My white bed sheet sometimes reminded me of ‘kefen’ (in Azerbaijani – white shroud used to roll people in while burying) and sometimes of ‘belek’ (in Azerbaijani – white shroud used to roll new-born babies until they are half-a-year old). It was as if I had been split into two, and that was destroying me. I fought with myself and it lasted for 18 days. I climbed from the basement where I lived to the roof of the building. Having stood from the bed, I forced my own self lying in bed to raise the white flag of peace.
While I was planning to continue my performance, another fight started in October 2020. Armenian troops started bombarding my hometown with – will I survive? Every day I was waiting for another missile which would land in our house and ruin everything. I was in the basement again fighting with myself; should I escape or step into the action? As an artist, I wanted to keep creating but this intention kept being halted. One of these days, I – a true flaneur – was wandering in the city in the quest of artistic vibrations and one rocket landed just in front of me. Although it had been expected, I still could not believe it was happening to me. My heart was drumming in my ears. Never had been so close to death. I couldn’t breathe and lost my speech for a while. At such proximity to death – to non-existence – I suddenly discovered new dimensions inside me beyond the ones which are hardly attainable even through hypothesizing artful creation. Parallelly, voices of imposed and imposing narratives were penetrating my mind – the narratives of my family, my friends, my compatriots, my society, my responsibilities and all. By this moment, the social construct named ‘Qafar’ had already disappeared. Was I losing my mind? I was becoming split again into two
War was over after 44 days. I took my bed sheet and launched into traveling. I am In Poland. But there is silence and emptiness as well. Is everything done then? Again I am in my bed and my dreams don’t let me sleep. Postwar trauma. I felt it in my whole body. But it was just the beginning. I was thrown way back and forced to analyze what had happened with me; and while I was waiting for my tram to reach my room in Krakow, I suddenly felt proud of my decision to be here, to come to Poland. I was on the tram. A man came to me and started to scream at me aggressively. I tried to understand what he wanted to say anything in response but nope. Everyone was running away from me. They thought I am dangerous. No one was answering. Another unexpected fight was happening there. To escape from it, I jumped out at the next station. He called me a terrorist, but I am not. I was asking questions to myself while I was on the way home. Why do I even have expectations from people in the first place? Maybe I must leave this place or maybe fight. I was exhausted. In my room, my bed sheet was in front of me. It was calling me to run away and scream; scream, scream to the world that I am an artist and that I will never kill someone, I would never kill, never. Don’t stop when you are free and force yourself and stay here. Raise your flag again against all this shit.
So all in all, this work aims to raise in me the awareness of myself as an artist and as a human being. Being aware where you are, what is happening around and where you have come from. It might be either protesting or just accepting everything around. After all these struggles – feeling trapped in the middle of these opposites, – I decided to run away to create a ground for harmony within myself by raising the flag of peace again. I raised my flag and I kept running till my body told me to stop. I threw away all my pains and memories which make my life messy.” (Text by courtesy of Qafar Rzayev)
