Humanity need not wait for another Flood to consider saving the living world. Our ark sets sail today, and we must decide whom and what to carry into the future.

The project centres on a miniature of Noah’s Ark, filled with people, animals, birds and plants. More than a ship, it models a world where nature and civilisation are inseparable. This bestiary in motion gathers living beings so that life may continue. While a traditional bestiary preserves their images, the ark preserves life itself. We are all in the same boat: the future of one depends on another.

Around this work, the Museum of Miniature Art creates a contemporary bestiary of imaginary creatures preserved in artistic memory. Through Azerbaijan’s “Big Five” — the gazelle, Caucasian leopard, brown bear, grey wolf and Eastern imperial eagle — the project asks: will they find room on the ark of the future, or remain only in images and legends?

The museum becomes an ark for the living world and miniature painting — a language through which humanity has explored nature and its place in the universe for centuries.

This creates a dual responsibility: the “Big Five” must not become figures in a future bestiary, nor miniature painting a memory of a lost artistic language. A museum can preserve an artwork, but a tradition lives only when new masters emerge, new miniatures are created, and craftsmanship passes from generation to generation.