"Preface.
A View through X-Ray Arch"

  Within the framework of the project «Destination – Asia», two exhibitions were held in 2007: the first one hosted artists from India and Pakistan in Almaty (Kazakhstan), the second one featured artists from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Mumbai (India). The project continued with the conference on «Eastern Orientalism» in summer 2008 as well as the publication of the given catalogue. The main goal of the project has been to bring closer the regions that had lost political, economic and cultural contacts for several centuries and to establish a new cultural meridian between the sub-continent and Central Asian countries. The first exhibition was titled «Non-strict Correspondence» and the second one named «Flying Over Stereotypes». Both names reflected the current relations between the regions that have recently been limited to primitive stereotypes with regard to each other. During the project, one could often hear exclamations of surprise when participants heard words, concepts, myths, garments, food and names that coincided in Hindi, Russian, Urdu, Tajik, Kazakh or Uzbek languages.

  Nonetheless, «Non-strict Correspondence» reminded only indirectly of the previous unity and the «Asiatic-ness». Undoubtedly, Indian and Pakistani artists have been more integrated into the global art world and represented a more developed and powerful cultural system. They have had relations with collectors, private galleries and state structures; they know how to evaluate their works implemented at a high level, including technicality. In contrast, the Central Asian artists’ exhibit was distinctly hermetic and markedly preoccupied by their internal problems, which was delicately referred to in India as «the aesthetics of poor art.» It is general knowledge that in the post-Soviet space, intellectuals are at the lowest social stage. On the other hand, the themes of these exhibitions were in fact rather close – international terrorism and religious conflicts common for the entire world were of concern to artists from both regions (Sharmila Samant, B.V. Suresh (India), Bani Abidi, Hamra Abbas, Nadia Shaukat (Pakistan), Said Atabekov, Erbossyn Meldibekov (Kazakhstan)). The multitude of opinions expressed in this regard may have been due to the geographical location: Afghanistan is between us. At the same time, the scope of terrorism in the global scale has heightened the feeling of identity and not only on personal, but also on national, regional and supranational levels (Tushar Joag, L.N. Tallur, N. Pushpamala, Vivan Sundaram (India), Huma Muldji (Pakistan), Ulan Dzhaparov (Kyrgyzstan), Sergey Tychina (Uzbekistan), Almagul Menlibaeva, Said Atabekov (Kazakhstan), Daler Rakhmanov and Gulandom Mukhabbatova (Tajikistan). Thus, the project was split into two parts but not based on arithmetic or geographical components but according to conceptual analysis of the global situation: terrorism and identity – facial (averse) and the reverse side of the world picture. As L.Tallur has expressed in his work «Souvenir Manufacturer»,  «We are forced to think under the flags».

  Monuments to Heroes

  This coincidence of views still proved to be totally unexpected because each side had subconsciously anticipated versions of historical image from the other party, the image that is deeply ingrained in the pores: a sari-clad woman and a horse-mounted barbarian. It was shocking to see the dramatic evolution of the stereotype formed by the films of Raj Kapur (extremely popular in the USSR) that has gone all the way from the naïve-sentimental film to the glamorous  Bollywood industrial cinema. The «Indian Lady» of Pushmapala N. is a very wicked parody of the present day India. An actress coquettishly coming out from behind the curtains with the Bombay skyscrapers daubed on them is an embodiment of  a hypocritical, false supercapitalist society, a goddess, a woman of society, a «varnished woman» (S. Rushdi), would be impossible to imagine in the real streets of Bombay overcrowded with beggars. At the same time, quite recently a «woman in the sari» could be seen on ethnographic colonial post-cards, which Pushpamala has used for her «Ethnographic series». The artist photographed her contemporaries using historical anthropometric data and European instruments, thus bridging the present with the far from “varnished” past. Central Asian artists did not need to be reminded of the history: the archaic image of a mounted barbarian is the topic set in stone for centuries. Since the times of Attila, Chingiz Khan and Tamerlane, the perception of the region has not changed. This perception was underpinned by the complete isolation created by the fundamentalist regimes of Kokand and Khiva khanates, the Bukhara emirate of XVII-XIII centuries, logically continued by the Big Game and the totalitarian USSR system. Thus, in the geographic stratification of Easts based on the degree of proximity to Europe – Far, Near, Middle East, a strange ideological formation, that of the Soviet East appeared. After supplying the formal features of developed social state for the region: free education, health care, industry, culture, the Soviet power gave place to the authoritarianism of independency in 1991, which continued the tradition of isolation. Again, in the same manner as at the turn of the century, the heritage of the previous regime was destroyed – a time-proven mechanism of acculturation and historical amnesia. The image of a mounted barbarian has gained a new and somewhat old meaning – Chingiz Khan and Tamerlane became national heroes.

  Similar to Pushpamala N., Erbossyn Meldibekov works with identity stereotypes and their interpretations. He intentionally speculates with the idea of a legendary Asian brutality and barbarizes even the nature itself, re-tracing in the landscapes the bloody campaigns of Chingiz Khan (“Chingiz Khan’s Map, or The Red Horse’s Skin”), constructing mountain ranges out of old pans and pots and thus marking the «hot spots» of the planet («the Hindu Kush»). A mounted barbarian in his interpretation may be anyone; in the classic monument to a rider («Monument to a Hero»), Meldibekov leaves only the legs of the horse, thus allowing the viewer to guess who will be in the saddle in one, ten or hundred years. «Pastan», where an unknown person continuously slaps the author on his cheeks, appears to deal with the stereotype of oriental submission, but in fact it is a response to the shooting of thousand and a half rebels in Andizhan in 2005. In contrast to the installation «Bread» of B.V. Suresh telling the cruel history of burning bakery workers during the collision of Hindu and Muslims in 2002 in Gujarat province, Erbossyn only hints by wearing an embroidered skull-cap: self-censorship replaced the formally abolished censorship in Central Asia. The same problem elicits reactions from two different social systems, two parts of the world, two different countries of the Orient. Manifestations of human brutality are sadly a global process.

  West as a country of the dead*

  Speaking about stereotypes it is impossible to avoid another issue: it is generally assumed that a western artist speaks on behalf of the entire global community because his works are not ethnically distinct, while the work of Asian or African artists is local by definition. But the existing scope of religious and national conflicts has paradoxically stimulated the emergence of the subject of identity in the region where nobody would have expected it – in Europe. «We are forced to think under the flags»: the global screen gets pixilated. Under the current status of English as lingua franca, there is an explosion of interest to Gaelic, Irish and Welsh languages in Great Britain. The 12th Documenta articulated the regional backgrounds of the participants, exhibited historical Asian artifacts and showcased the European art of the entire ХХth century as just one of many themes of the exhibition. The example of a Dutch Jeroen Offerman is of interest here; he «brought home» the well-known «Staircase leading to the Sky» of Led Zeppelin and London’s St. Paul Cathedral from the space of the international culture into the category of «pure English» phenomenon using the local legend about the danger of becoming the devil’s follower if one were to sing a song backwards. Mythologizing the local context, the artist demythologizes the global one.

  The same method was used in the work of a Pakistani artist Bani Abidi, the participant of «Non-strict Correspondence». Her work «The Boy Who Got Tired of Posing» is a series of photographs of children dressed as Arab warriors and swinging cartoon swords. The last photograph registers scattered clothes and the sport-shoe-wearing feet of the boy running away. While the artists share the same strategy, the dilemma of the local-global has different emotional content: the Western myth gets interpreted from one positive image to another though the Eastern myth translates the negative one into positive. The wish to justify the situation somehow, to tell that not all the people in the East are warriors and terrorists inclined to aggression, is expressed through the image of children, which awakens hope. But it still is dissonant with the specificity of marching soldiers of Hamra Abbas («Left-right») and the symbolism of luxurious brocade robes with camouflage lining of Said Atabekov («Untitled»). The prejudice towards the East of which Edward Said has written, is not only still there but, unfortunately, has acquired additional acuteness given the substantial amount of manifestations of extremism inside Eastern countries themselves: the Taliban, the Civil War in Tajikistan in 1992-1996, the Sunnites and Shiites, HAMAS and FATHA, the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the invasion of Georgia by Russia.

  The European art, which has always been considered to have the world value, seems to have come back home. In 1997 Clinton stated that the USA must «manage without dominant European culture». ** The Eastern countries, on the contrary, have started actively importing European art institutes: large biennials have been organized in Istanbul, Guangzhou, Singapore, Teheran, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Taipei, Busan. Festivals and auctions are held, residence and grant programs for artists and curators are organized. The most ambitious project is a branch of Louvre in the United Arab Emirates. It has gotten boring to pose – demythologization has changed the negative into the positive thus mythologizing the local cultural spaces.

  Post-Soviet East

  Although Said complained thirty years ago that «it seems that nobody would be able to overcome the opposition «we» and «they»», which is expressed in feeling the identity becoming deeper and more rigid, the identity that nobody has ever been taught purposefully»***, he hence opposed to «the orientalization» of the East. As the most important meaning of the term, he considered the sin of describing the «classic» period of the East and the negligence with regard to its contemporary realities.

  Central Asia so far has been an ideal object of sterility: neither Rollinson, nor Champologne, nor Max Muller worked here. Neither Flaubert, nor Hugo, nor Kipling, nor Nerval nor even Edward Said himself wrote about it. Few researchers, apart from Kestle, Burns, Blockville and Vamberi were also oriental people: Arab conquerors, Chinese diplomats, Russian colonizers and a Kazakh ethnographer Chokan Valikhanov, which did not contribute to the integration of their books into the global circuits of knowledge. Current realities also signal of neglect; Central Asia does not even figure into the maps of the BBC or Euronews weather reports. Countries that have recently acquired independence, specifically in the post-soviet space, have sought legitimacy, not only political but also emotional: neglect fuels the desire for approval. The states involve into this process PR agencies, glamorous personalities of the global art scene, archaeologists and journalists. For instance, the government of Kazakhstan has invited Paulo Koelho, Steven Seagal, Mikhail Shemyakin. However, the Soviet habit of falsification and the authoritarian perception that it is possible to lie not only to one’s own people but to the entire world, most often yield comical results. That is the reason why Borat Sagdiev appeared.

  The reverse side of the process is neglect of research, analysis, scientific approach, in short, a fear of an honest investigation. One’s own people are specially distrusted but outsiders too, if they are independent. One of the best studies on contemporary Central Asian architecture with the eloquent name «Aesthetics of Vacuum» has been written by the German Philip Moiser; the publication of, free from both Soviet and new nationalistic myths, the «History of Central Asia» has been implemented under the guidance of professor Nurbulat Masanov, who had been expelled from the Kazakh State University and died at the age of fifty. Bhavna Dave from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London dedicated to Masanov her book «Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power». This case is especially interesting because this researcher who was born in India has been working within the discourse of the post-colonial theory and used the «background of cultural-religious contradictions»**** among the peoples of the USSR. It can be also mentioned that today the background of cultural-religious contradictions, specific both for Kazakhstan and for the entire Central Asia, is not only in relation to the post-Soviet space, but also Europe and America and, as it turns out, Asia as well. What is better – to be subject to «orientalism-based» study or to remain just nobody? On the other hand, an empty vessel could be filled in with any fluid, which in principle, is very convenient for development of new identities, including the phenomenon of «managed democracy».

  Contemporary Central Asian artists are almost unknown among the local people. European and American institutions organize training programs for them, exhibitions and residencies in an attempt to support in the cultural environment of the region. In turn, «the managed democracy» prefers «realists» - the old proven school of the creation virtual happy Arcadias and imaginary Great Khanates.

  Genius Loci

  One of the works created based on the impressions of the trip to India is a video-performance «On the Ground» by a Kazakhstani artist Natalya Dyu. The immediate impression is that her main idea is to observe the reactions of people around. A similar method has been used by many contemporary artists: one of the most popular cycles of this kind is a performance by Kimsooja, a Korean American artist. She used to stop in the middle of the street in different cities of the world while her camera registered emotions displayed by the people. Reactions were diverse and depended upon the temperament of the city or the country, from indifference of the passers-by to the crowds of children peeping into the camera lens. Natalya Dyu models a different situation – lying on the pavement she pretended to be sleeping or reading a paper, since it seemed to her that in Mumbai this practice was common.  But everything turned out to be different; life in the street is allowed only for a certain category of people – strolling sages, the poor, invalids, i.e., people from the lower walks of life, low social stratum. Natasha who looked rather European in her snow-white trousers provoked derision, curiosity, bewilderment and even insults. At the same time, this artist from a Korean family that had been deported from the Far East to Kazakhstan during the Stalin regime and experienced a triple complex (of being an Asian, a representative of an ethnic minority and an exile), she tried to prove her proximity to Mumbai, India, Asia and East. But the affinity suggested in such a direct way was rejected. She stayed «on the ground» that has not accepted her. This work is a metaphor of searching for the motherland, in which, as it is widely known, there are no prophets.

  Pushpamala N. who works on identity issues has written about her project «Native of South India: «A native means «populating the place», but who is populating the place – the one who was born there or the one that has chosen to live there? And which of them is more «typical»? The project plays with the «motherland» concept. Nowadays, at the time of regionalism and religious policy this is the most disputable issue».***** The books of Edward Said, Salman Rushdi, Ahmed Rashid, Tarik Ali and Orkhan Pamuk have become known through publications in English; the works of  Shirin Neshat, Kutlug Ataman, Mona Khatum, Amar Kanvar, Anish Kapur have become famous at the exhibitions in the German Kassel and the British Tate. The majority of these cult «oriental people» live in New-York and London.

  At the same time each of them keeps the feeling of his or her belonging to the ethnicity, city or village, to people and the country of origin; or to put it plainly – to the motherland. «For me it is important, this is part of my identity», says Almagul Menlibaeva, an artist from Kazakhstan who now lives in Berlin. Shirin Neshat who is a symbol of the East in the artistic world, nevertheless, was forced to choose what to become – an artist or an Iranian. She was able combine both only in the USA, given that tough clerical regime of Iran does not offer any other alternatives. Importing Western artistic institutes, the East simultaneously exports artists with their conflicts – the latter is necessary for art. It looks like in oil business: having obtained the rights for the pumping oil, foreign corporations return it as commodity, at a much more expensive rate. Said was right to suggest withdrawing the word «East»: «only scientists, critics, intellectual will stay; they are the people for whom ethnic, racial and national differences are less important compared to the common goal of human community development»******

  The only issue is where will they stay?

*            From Egiptian mythology.

**        Quoted from: S. Hantington «Who we Are?», M, «Transitkniga», 2004, p. 44. ***      E.Said «Orientalism. Western Concepts of The East», SPb «Russkiy Mir», 2006 , p.517.

****     Bhavna Dave, Presentation of the book «Kazakhstan – ethnicity, language and power», In the club «Politon», Almaty, 04.04.2008. Quoted from shorthand verbatim report, available at: http://www.club.kz/index.php?lang=ru&mod- large&article=277

*****    Pushpamala N&Clare Arni “Native Women of South India. Manners and Customs”, Bangalore 2004, p. 135. ****** E. Said «Orientalism.Western concepts of the East» SPb, «Russkiy Mir», 2006, p. 507.

Valeria Ibraeva, Kazakhstan

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