Three brightly coloured, highly saturated figurative paintings, Agil Abdullayev’s series Pretties from South Caucasus (2024) situates the artists’ personal experience within a wider cultural context of performed identity. The simplified soft and curving motifs of cars and plants, plus the suggestive pose of the central fluorescent pink male figure, speak to the confluence of masculine and feminine. In the context of the conservative social norms of Abdullayev’s home country of Azerbaijan these playful paintings are also provocative and challenging.

Through bold colour, graphic outlines and a flat treatment of space Abdullayev carves out a queer alternate space reminiscent of a cartoon environment. These, however, are not utopian idealised environments. In the anonymity of the central character and the cultural allusions to social media, emojis and gay porn, the Pretties series considers how gestures and codes create bonds within subcultures but also conceal much. Largely naked with their faces hidden by mobile phones, these figures simultaneously reveal and withhold their identity. Abdullayev prompts us to consider the different versions of ourselves we present to the world, and to question the essence of identity that lies beneath exterior performance.