Jacob
Yakubov

Jacob Yakubov is an artist, famous for his extraordinary works made from beton and metal, exploring the traditions of ancient crafts and Zen philosophy. Born in 1988, in Baku, Azerbaijan. In 1993 he moved to Moscow, where in 2010 graduated from the Finance Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation.From the school years he was fond of poetry and experimented with music.In 2011, he participated in the opening of the restaurant “Birds” in the center of Moscow, where he worked as the art director and the ideologist of the project.In 2012 he graduated from the New York Film Academy (Screenwriting Faculty).In 2013, he was the organisator of the Night Market project on the territory of the Red October factory in Moscow, in which art, fashion and design were united under one roof.In 2016, he graduated from the Faculty of Gemology at the Russian State Geological Prospecting University.At the end of 2012, he set off on a long journey through Southeast Asia to study multicultural layers and spiritual practices. In 2013, he began working on creating his own brand WHO/AM which unites art, fashion and design and represents clothes as a way to reflexively know oneself.In 2016, he graduated from the faculty of gemology at the Russian State Geological Prospecting University and founded the Yakubov Jewelry House.In 2017, he founded the WHO I AM Gallery of Contemporary Art, and a year later participated in a parallel program of the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art.In 2019 he participated in the Cosmoscow-2019 Contemporary Art Fair and in the Parallel Program of 8th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art ("Dialogues" Project). Group exhibitions:"Who am I" - WHO I AM Gallery, Moscow, 2017.“Who are we?” - WHO I AM Gallery, Moscow, 2017-2018."Dialogue" - WHO I AM Gallery, Moscow, 2019. Solo exhibitions:Total installation “אדם קדמון” - A parallel program of the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, 2018.Performance “Knowledge” - A parallel program of the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, 2018.Performance “Dialogue” - "Dialogue", Moscow, 2019.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:“All my life, from my early childhood, I was in a state of questioning to life, to the universe, to the people who surrounded me. I searched for answers in the works of great philosophers, in the books of mystics and masters of Eastern wisdom, but discovered there only new questions or my own thoughts and ideas. My search required more and more investigations. ”“Once I realized that the problem was the formulation of the question. For many years I have been searching for the truth outside until one day in the East I met with myself. In one moment everything disappeared - there was no duality, separation, there was nothing. Mystics call this phenomenon a transformation. ”“The quintessence of my research was the turn of the question inside, to myself, to who was therein: who am I? This contributed to the realization of inner Me through the medium of creative energy. My installations and objects are my own language, through which I communicate with space, people and my own personality. I am the one who seeks and I call this You without you”
“Concrete is one of my favorite materials, and the love for it came from the architecture. The aesthetics of concrete buildings, exposing the texture and color of the material, always attracted me. ”“For me, work on objects is a meditative act where I don’t know what I’ll specifically do and work intuitively, turning my actions into a fusion of ideas, experiences, images, emotions, and situations, waiting for the most important thing - total presence.”