INTRODUTION
“Eastern Orientalism” Conference is the third part of the project “Destination – Asia”, the main topic of which is the idea of renaissance of the cultural links of South Asia with historically and geographically close to it Central Asia. Nevertheless the Project continues to collaborate with European culture and sciences, including so called by Edward Said “European Orientalism”.
In 2007 the Soros Center of Contemporary Art – Almaty organized two big exhibitions along with the colleagues Sharmila Samant ( India ) and Kuddus Myrza ( Pakistan ) for the project “Destination – Asia”. They were the "Non-Strict Correspondence" exhibition (contemporary art of India and Pakistan ) in June in Almaty and “Flying Over Stereotypes” (contemporary art of Central Asia ) in December in Mumbai ( Bombay ).
The unexpected and successful continuation of the project was the idea of the owner of Mumbai Gallery Project 88 to organize the joint exhibition of Indo-Pakistanian and Central Asian artists in Dubai ( United Arab Emirates ). In May 2008 in the Elementa Gallery the exhibition “Conversation” took place, which was roll-call, discussion, and search of similarities and differences between artists from different countries, thinking about the same ideas. The exhibitions of the project “Destination – Asia ” were sponsored by the Holland HIVOS Fund, the exhibition in Dubai was the commercial project, which is usual thing for the Indo-Pakistanian artists and absolutely unusual for the Central Asian artists who are making their first steps on art market.
In these conditions, the theme “Eastern Orientalism” became even more critical. New developing capitalism in Asian countries gave to their cultures feeling of freedom and the possibility to escape being servants for the government as well as total unprotected from competitiveness of cultures; set the new goals to enter in the “big” art world on equal conditions.
The conference is dedicated to the thirty years anniversary of publishing Edward Said's book and to the thirty anniversary of the East becoming the open part of the global art system.
The fourth stage of the project “Destination Asia ” will be the publication of the book in the end of 2008 including the conference reports in two languages – Russian and English, and the visual and the informative materials of two exhibitions.
- Press-release of the conference and of "Versions..." exhibition >>>
- Conference participants (leaflet) >>>
- "Versions..." exhibition >>>
- Time-table >>>
Project organization:
Soros Center for Contemporary Art -
Almaty
Curatorial team:
Sharmila Samant (India),
Abdul Quddus Mirza (Pakistan),
Valeria Ibraeva (Kazakhstan).
Aliya Sharipbaeva - project coordination,
Dastan Kozhakhmetov - coordinator for exhibition’s projects SCCA-Almaty,
Lyubov Tikhomirova - accountant SCCA-Almaty,
Pyotr An - office-manager SCCA-Almaty
SPONSORS:
 Design Academy (Kazakhstan) |
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EDEM Restaurant |
OUR PARTNERS :
 "ULAR" The gallery of modern art |