The Golden Line
Cyanotype is one of the first techniques of analog printing of photography, characterized by its blue color, which the inventor John Herschel called the Berlin glaze. The artist Meruert Kunakova refers to this rare type of photo printing as a media that retains nostalgia. The word which is translated from Ancient Greek means νόστος - «return to the homeland» and άλγος - «pain, sorrow». In her reflection on the theme of identity and the state of a lost culture, the artist refers to the archive of Turkestan Album as the main documentary evidence of the 19th century, which documented the culture and life of the Central Asian peoples. The ethnographic album, created by General Kaufmann's order, as one of the instruments of colonial policy, becomes especially ephemeral in this series. Just one light but the painstaking gesture in the form of a golden contour holds the images seemingly ready to dissolve right before our eyes.
Meruert Kunakova is an artist from Almaty, Kazakhstan. She works in painting, sculpture, and cyanotypes, as well as textiles and embroidery. Her approach deals with trauma in the individual and collective memory.
