They say the eyes are the gateway to the soul, but what do you make of a face with its eyes closed? Is the person deep in contemplation, suffering some intense trauma, closing their eyes against a bright light, or simply having a little rest?
This is the haunting terrain of Ulviyya Seyidova’s work, known under her artistic name Assaya. In her series Open Your Eyes, faces emerge from darkness in a subdued, almost spectral palette. Their eyes are shut, but their expressions speak volumes – of struggle, serenity, endurance, and silence. Stripped of the gaze, these portraits draw us closer, daring us to read between the lines of the human face to uncover their story.
Some canvases hold a single presence; others are crowded with many. A chorus of pained expressions mixed with some peaceful ones conjures the full spectrum of human emotion. And behind it all is Seyidova’s own story. Living with stage four cancer, she brings to each work a weight that can’t be faked: a lived confrontation with fragility, time, and the self. The result is intimate and universal – portraits that feel like mirrors held up to our inner lives.
What happens when these eyes open? Will clarity follow? Chaos? Catharsis? The moment is suspended, poised on the edge of transformation. And yet, it’s also a confrontation with stasis, with the fear that some eyes may never open again. Seyidova leaves us in the realm of uncertainty. A painting captures a moment; what happens next is for us, the viewer, to determine.
There’s a broader resonance here, too. In a world inundated by conflict, ecological collapse, and relentless noise, Open Your Eyes can be read as a challenge: to see what we’ve numbed ourselves to. Are these closed eyes metaphors for collective denial or a necessary pause before re-engaging?
And still, there’s gentleness. These figures might be drawing inward, not out of avoidance but to find strength, gather breath, and prepare for whatever comes next. Assaya’s works allow for vulnerability and resistance, moments of stillness that hint at resilience.
This balance between internal and external worlds carries into her Quantum Chaos series. Here, she shifts from portraiture to abstraction, using colour and texture to explore the invisible forces that govern the cosmos. Inspired by quantum theory, the works feel suspended in motion, dense with unseen energy, shimmering at the edge of comprehension. Are we looking at subatomic matter? Vast nebulae? The parallels between the infinitely small and the impossibly large blur, evoking a sense of awe and unknowing. While large in scale, each work has a haziness, touching on the unknowable nature of the quantum realm and allowing us to get lost in her worlds.
The emotional charge in these works feels like a more controlled form of the expression we see in Francis Bacon’s portraits or akin to the subtler emotional drawings by Kathe Kollwitz and paintings by Marlene Dumas. Assaya joins a long tradition through art history of portrait painters who channel the feelings they feel they can’t or are unable to express in life through their paintings, often offering a truer view of a person than we’d ever know from meeting them face to face.
Whether through the quiet gravity of closed eyes or the charged uncertainty of abstract space, her paintings offer not answers but invitations to witness, feel, and reckon. In a world that urges us to look away, Assaya asks us gently but insistently to keep looking. The eyes in the paintings may be closed, but they invite us to open ours to the emotions and worlds within Assaya’s paintings.
More information on Assaya’s work and practice may be found on her website and her Instagram.
