This painting is an act of remembrance rooted in both victory and mythology. Painted as a tribute to the liberation of Karabakh, it depicts the ancient Azerbaijani legend of the Khari Bulbul — a species of orchid (Ophrys mammosa) that grows nowhere on earth except in the hills of Shusha. The legend holds that this uniqueness is no accident.
Once, the plants of the world could speak, love, and grieve as people do. A nightingale fell in love with a rose, and every flower celebrated their union. A thorn, consumed by jealousy, declared its own love to the rose. When refused, it tore a petal in rage. As the nightingale wept, every flower joined in mourning — and together they made a single prayer: take our voices, take our feelings, but let this love survive. The Creator accepted. All plants fell silent, stripped of speech and longing, transformed into the forms we know today. The rose, the nightingale and the thorn became one flower — the Khari Bulbul — and that flower vowed to grow only in the earth where the sacrifice was made. In Shusha it grows, and nowhere else.
Generations later, ensnared by the isolation of the Qajar palaces, Cevanshir, the daughter of the Karabakh Khan, breathed the spirit of this legend into her poem:
"The Garden of the Homeland is in vibrant, brilliant bloom,
Yet the Khari-bulbul is missing from its soil.
Why is the rest of your body so full of bright colors,
While beneath your chest you carry a pale, fading yellow, oh nightingale?"
Rüstamlı visually translates this aching melody through her signature punctuation technique. Thousands of meticulous, individual ink-dots slowly materialize into a vibrant cosmos. At its center stands the princess herself, draped in traditional finery, her fingers resting against a saz. She is enveloped by a swirling, hypnotic universe of interlocking buta motifs and the shimmering, golden silhouettes of the Khari Bulbul—a visual symphony of exile, memory, and enduring love that earned its place in the exhibition and catalogue of the International Communication and Art Symposium (INCAS, 2021).
