The Art of Quarantine Period
"Museum of the Unimaginable. Chinese Vanguard and Contemporary Art of Central Asia: 40 years of silent dialogue" curated by Vladislav Sludskiy
Chronicle of virtual events in the art community of Central Asia.
The consequences of Covid-19 paralyzed the work of many galleries and cultural organizations. International art forums postpone events till the next year and develop alternative formats of art representation. Aware of the vulnerability of the cultural industry, many Western countries have identified art as a separate category for financial support. In the Central Asian region, the need to support art and independent cultural organizations has never been discussed at the government level. In anticipation of the second wave, in the case of Kazakhstan, the third lockdown, artists, curators, editors and all those involved in art production are at risk, with the prospect of unemployment. However, the art community of Central Asia did not remain in stagnation, contrary, mobilized, and continued to work actively in self-isolation mode. The main event of the quarantine period was the formation of the Art Bazaar group, initiated by a Bishkek based artist - Meder Akhmetov.
The idea of creating an alternative market was inspired by the Russian group "Ball and Cross", however, from its analog, Art Bazaar differs by a less strict approach in the relation to management. Only a small part of the works proposed by the artists get featured in "Ball and Cross", while Art Bazaar publishes almost all the proposals. Buyers are often other artists, creating a model resembling a game “black box”, or network marketing, with the possibility of sale and exchange. When selling several works, the artist also undertakes to buy one work from another proposal. By selling and buying from each other, artists have developed an environment of collective care, making a cycle of transactions within one community.
Consolidation also became part of an educational program initiated by Aigerim Kapar, an Astana based curator, and Vato Tsereteli, a Georgian artist. The participants practiced collective painting sessions during online conferences in open masterclasses. This activity resulted in a web exhibition called “Flexible focus” on the Artcom website.
Anar Aubakir, "Genocodtar", collage, liner 2020 Chronicle of virtual events in the art community of Central Asia.
Aida Sulova, a curator from Bishkek, also presented the “Visual Storytelling” educational program. The results of the masterclasses were presented in virtual halls on the Artstep platform. Accompanied by the works, artists posted audio recordings with a direct speech, which created the effect of the presence.
In the circumstances of a pandemic, virtual exhibitions were no longer the exclusive prerogative of artists working with new media. The game-play experience of meeting with art also became part of the virtual exposition of Almaty based curator Vladislav Sludskiy. "Museum of the Unimaginable. Chinese Vanguard and Contemporary Art of Central Asia: 40 years of silent dialogue" - as the author writes, the project of this exhibition is difficult to imagine in reality due to purely practical reasons, such as the high cost of insurance and logistics of the works. The exhibition is built on parallels of Kazakh and Chinese artists’ works, the main themes are identity, the conflict between modern and traditional, socialist utopia, and the reality of consumerism.
Extremely alarming in the situation of the pandemic, the theme of the future became the main motif for the scrolling exhibition “Cybernomadism”, which was launched at the beginning of the quarantine on the IADA website. As the name implies, the future here was presented as a cyber utopia from the perspective of nomadic culture. The works of 9 artists were presented in the context of decolonization of the imagination from the future, which in one way or another is appropriated by Western narratives.
Marat Dilman, untitled ,object ,2018
Even such a conservative institution as the Kasteev Almaty Museum of Arts did not pass by the transformation processes. The need for media presence as the main form of the institution's existence under the new reality prompted the museum staff to create online exhibitions and record video tours. Giving a try to the new format, the museum quickly realized that traditional art does not attract the attention of the audience on the internet. A peculiar turn from conservative strategy to contemporary art was the exhibition of works by Rustam Halfin, one of the pioneers of contemporary art in Central Asia.
The quarantine had a favorable effect on the state museum, which moved away from the demonstration of accustomed exhibitions and turned to meet the audience’s needs. The promising project “Tselinnyy Center” postponed its opening till the next year, but it was activated during the quarantine by launching a website with lectures, performances, and master classes for children.
The pandemic created a unique situation when all international museums began producing thematic and educational content, adapted to online work. In this stream of content, the focus on working with the local community allowed the “Tselinnyy Center” to occupy its niche.
Aziza Shadenova, Girl, 2020
The final online exhibition of the quarantine period was a New York gallery project called "New Voices: Stories from the Isolation”. The exhibition of artists from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia combined works created during the period of quarantine. The conditions of this isolation also raised a new question for the art industry, calling for rethinking the traditional understanding of what the exhibition is. This project kept the interest of the public with new works by well-known authors in the community, and because of the design layout and prices of the signed works, the exhibition turned to be rather an online catalog.
Anvar Musrepov