Kirgistan, Kirgisistan, Kirgizia or Kyrgyzstan – all are possible ways to spell the name of a country that is still little-known, at least in the West.¹ Maybe it is a bit less astonishing if you take into account that it has existed as an independent nation only since 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated. On the other hand, it has been 17 years since then. If you look at a map of the world, Kyrgyzstan is situated in the Asian expanse like a smudge at the fringe of the former Soviet Union. The country borders China ands three other former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan in the north, Uzbekistan in the west and Tajikistan in the southwest. After the fall of the USSR, the former inner Soviet borders became international ones – often, however, it is not clear exactly where the former borders were. With few exceptions, the borders between the countries were not marked, with the result that today there are thousands of kilometers of disputed borders in Central Asia, many of them in inaccessible terrain, that have to be painstakingly negotiated by bilateral commissions.

Above all, disputes over the borders in Fergana Valley have led to continual unrest in the region. In large part, this is a legacy from the Soviet era. Between 1924 and 1936, borders were drawn arbitrarily; they were not oriented along natural borders nor did they adhere to ethnic criteria, while at the same time ethno-territorial republics were created. In pre-Soviet times, the inhabitants of Fergana Valley identified themselves through family relations, religious practices and regional origin: there were no set state-like entities, especially since the Kyrgyz were nomads. When drawing boundary lines resulted in competition between nationalities for territory, or for road or water infrastructure, the Soviet central government functioned as a mediator, thus strengthening its authority in the restive region. After the universal influence of Soviet colonial power had subsided, the former Soviet republics hid in their »national apartments« and began to build their own »Berlin Wall«.² During the nearly 70 years of Soviet rule, economic and social interdependencies had formed among the constituent republics, which were interrupted from one day to the next when the new borders were drawn; in addition, large minority groups from the neighboring nations live in all of the new states.

»Shadows« (1999), the series of black-and-white photographs by the Kyrgyz artist couple Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev, shows where that can lead in the worst case. What at first sight looks like sheets laid out on the grass to dry in the sun turns out in the following images to be shrouds. The anonymous dead wrapped in the white sheets are not identifiable as belonging to a certain ethnic group. With this work, Kasmalieva and Djumaliev cast a shadow on the region’s official text. »Shadows« clarifies the ongoing tragedy and the horror of the violent multi-ethnic conflicts between local Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tadziks that have continued to flare up in the Fergana Valley since post-Soviet times and have also led to deaths.

In reality, Kasmalieva and Djumaliev, born in 1960 and 1965 respectively in Bishkek, are extremely skeptical concerning the value of the Central Asian states as separate entities or nations. Instead, they stress the strong relations and good cooperation between the artists in the individual countries, which move beyond the nationalist ambitions of those in power. The option to study in Moscow and St. Petersburg and enjoy more liberties during Gorbachev’s era of Perestroika – in 1988 Kasmalieva, for instance, participated in a legendary underground seminar in Estonia where the first experimental installations developed alongside expressive painting – sensitized them to such thoughts. They have already done quite a bit in the art field to promulgate their transnational viewpoint. Apart from the artistic activities they’ve been pursuing together since 1998, they function as directors of an organization they founded in Bishkek, ArtEast.³ Since 2002 Kasmalieva and Djumaliev have devoted themselves to the task of supporting a lively arts scene in a country where the end of the Soviet Union spelled the end of any kind of state-side infrastructure for education and the support of artists. ArtEast endeavors to further contemporary art in Kyrgyzstan, in particular by offering video workshops and access to a comprehensive library that is a gateway to international art discourses – areas that, they say, have so far been neglected in the traditionally oriented art schools. At the same time, they enter into partnerships with international cultural organizations and play an important role for the production of art in the larger region. Kasmalieva and Djumaliev organized the second and third International Bishkek Exhibition of Contemporary Art, »In the Shadow of Heroes« (2005) and »Zone of Risk. Transition« (2006), which brought together artworks from Central Asia and other parts of the world and also offered local artists an extended context for their creativity.

The success of the first Central Asian pavilion at the 51st Biennial in Venice in 2005 is another example for the good communication and cultural cooperation between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Russian curator Viktor Misiano initiated the project, which was also made possible by the only Kyrgyz gallery for contemporary art, Kurama ART, founded in 2003. As early as April 2004, this same gallery helped organize the country’s first international contemporary art exhibition »... and Others in Bishkek.« The exhibition presented more than 40 works, a broad spectrum of contemporary art, including the works of the two Kyrgyz artists. You would think that, at that point, contemporary art would have become a factor that could no longer be ignored in Kyrgyzstan. But, despite entering the global art discourse by being present in Venice, Kasmalieva and Djumaliev’s works are still the type of art that finds little recognition at home. Auezkhan Kodar compares the artists’ situation in Kyrgyzstan to the Vatican in Rome. They are a state within a state, albeit one that is not ecclesiastical or ideological. For Kodar, artists are the only ambassadors of a world that is known only to them. Their alienation from the relatives in their clan would be no secret, but perhaps it is just that alienation that harbors the chance to modernize the cultural situation in Central Asia.⁴

[b]Identities and Meta-Spaces[/b]
While the framework for the cultural discourse was once provided by Soviet cultural standards, according to which the different peoples in the USSR were to be more or less robbed of their identities, the search for just these identities is of utmost importance to the newly independent nations. Not contemporary art, but art that develops a traditional idea about a country – that is what the new republics hope will strengthen their national identities. In the search for a new self-image, questions of historical memory hold a particularly strong appeal. Gulanara Kasmalieva’s performance »Farewell Song« (2001) refers to ancient Kyrgyz traditions, but only to bid them farewell and enter a new, uncertain future. She develops a language that builds more on the destruction of ethnographic stereotypes than on their re-introduction. In this piece, an assistant interweaves the artist’s extremely long braids with a piece of cloth, while Kasmalieva, clad in traditional clothing, plays a Kyl Kiyak, an old-fashioned two-stringed nomad bow instrument. Finally, she cuts off the fake hair. Along with the decorative ethnographic element, a part of her real hair is lost as well. In the artist’s »New Menhirs« (2005) color photograph series, traditional ethnic moments, elements of Islam, of the old Soviet regime or even capitalist influences all co-exist, making it clear that the idea of a uniform national identity like the one the present leaders like to evoke is an illusion. One of the photographs shows a mausoleum with towers crowned by majestic mountain goat antlers – a Central Asian symbol for virility and courage – but also by the stars, comparable to those on the Kremlin tower. The fact that the artist couple comes up with such images indicates how seriously they take representing the region in all its cultural diversity, while the series’ title hints at the simultaneous balance between the future and the past. For thousands of years, prehistoric menhirs marked the Central Asian cemeteries – now the two, not without irony, describe concrete girders left over from demolished factories as the new menhirs of the post-communist era.

With »Trans-Siberian Amazons« (2004), the work that brought them fame at the 2005 Venice Biennial, and with their most recent piece, »A New Silk Road: Algorithm of Survival and Hope« (2006), they leave the local arena to delve into the region’s meta-spaces. Both works show how the altered socio-economic situation creates new realities for the individual. They call Kyrgyz suitcase hawkers, whose favorite trade route is the Trans-Siberian Railroad between China and Central Asia, Trans-Siberian Amazons. These women overcome the chasm of a trade deficit after the demise of the Soviet Union by supplying the country with imported goods from China, doing so despite a life full of hindrances, theft, indignities by customs officials and the trade mafia. Even without a complex narrative structure, mainly through the film’s editing and sound, an intimate picture of two suitcase dealers evolves. On the train ride, one of them, full of nostalgia, sings a Russian pop song from the 1980s.

»A New Silk Road,« a video installation on five channels, accompanied by 23 individual photographs, is Kasmalieva und Djumaliev’s most extensive work so far; it was commissioned for an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in spring 2007. The fall of the Iron Curtain led to a re-activation of the Silk Road in Central Asia. Today, however, its is not camels laden with the treasures of East Asia that plod along the road, as myth would have it, but truck caravans laden with scrap metal – the legacy of the Russian Empire. This material is transported from Kyrgyzstan to western China – from there, cheap clothing is brought back into the country. Kasmalieva and Djumaliev’s video installation and photographs show the old trade route’s new reality. Next to traditional villages and communities, a market-oriented economy that offers goods and services for travelers has sprouted from provisional posts near the highway. It remains to be seen what will develop in the future. The fact that this work deals with the newly blossoming trade relations with China may even be quite interesting from a US point of view. »You are now leaving the American sector« reads the t-shirt that artist Said Atabekov poses in, standing next to a road sign that reads »Kyrgyzstan«. Ever since the Americans erected a base at Kyrgyzstan’s Manas civilian airport when the war in Afghanistan began, there have been rumors that they might have been motivated by something other than merely protecting the region from terror attacks. It is evident that Russian, Chinese and American economic and political interests cross paths in this new geo-political setting in Central Asia.

Kasmalieva and Djumaliev’s new international project »Boom-Boom« (the 4th Contemporary Art Exhibition in Bishkek), planned for September, shows that the artists do not merely want to accept as given the global influences in their region. In their project, they want to include architects, designers, anthropologists and a good many ordinary folks alongside the artists. The idea goes back to Ulan Japarov, an architect who in 1988 participated in an important alternative architecture festival in Frunze (today Bishkek), a festival that brought together conceptual architects from the entire Soviet Union. From his architectural practice, Japarov developed initiatives promoting contemporary art in Kyrgyzstan, in particular the alternative exhibition hall MUSEUM studio; today, he is one of the art scene’s protagonists. Currently, there is interest in an analysis of the time that has past since this event. Another issue is the development of new perceptions and strategies for opposition against a form of globalization that in Central Asia in particular finds its expression in a construction boom that is widely regarded as destructive.

 

Translated by Dagmar Breitenbach, Jennifer Taylor

 

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