BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH - Contemporary art from the Centre of Asia
14th September 2011 to 13th November 2011 Press View: 13th September 10am – 1pm
Curated by David Elliott
Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged Rumi (13th Century poet and mystic, born in present day Tajikistan/Afghanistan, died in Turkey) Between Heaven and Earth is a ground-breaking and timely exhibition which will bring to UK audiences a strong sense of the overlooked, yet exceptionally vibrant contemporary art that is being made in the former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as in Afghanistan and Mongolia.
The persistent mythology of the Silk Road, as well as the ‘Great Game’ played out between the British and Russian Empires in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has dominated the Western view of these mysterious lands. More recently, however, these rich cultural and physical landscapes have been dismissed in the West as the ‘Stans’ and downgraded to theatres of environmental degradation, religious conflict and war. The result of such a reductive approach, is a perception radically different from the truth: one that is devoid of nuance and processed into inhuman clichés of a "Borat" style, post-Soviet wasteland.
Between Heaven and Earth depicts a radically different ‘landscape’. Featuring over twenty artists and artist groups, many of whom have not been seen in the UK before, the exhibition examines the recent emergence of a vital, critical, self confident contemporary art throughout Central Asia, challenging ingrown prejudices and stereotypes.
For over 5,000 years different cultures from both East and West migrated, mixed and eventually prospered in the deserts, mountains, cities and steppes between the Caspian Sea and the Mongolian plateau. Such hybridity, reinforced by continuing ebb and flow, was fertilized by many different routes of trade between the great capitals of China, Constantinople and the West.
The art developing now throughout the centre of Asia, directly reflects this highly complex history and examines the multifaceted nature of both power and culture, often in shocking or humorous ways. The nomadic figure of the shaman – a character appropriated for Western art by Joseph Beuys in the 1960s – appears sarcastically and surrealistically in the work of many of these artists as For further information please contact Calvert 22 Press and Marketing Officer Giulia Crossley: press@calvert22.org / 020 7613 2141 does a sense of the layering of spiritual experience in a region that still accommodates active belief in Animism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, overlaid by the deadweight of materialism.
Different aesthetic traditions also raise their heads in a number of ways: through ancient myths and stories, through the bright, clashing colours of ikat textiles and the architecture of 12th Century mosques, through the now fading memories of the vast populations of Koreans, Western Europeans and other ethnic groups who were deported to the region in the 1930s and ‘40s, through folk customs that are still kept alive in the face of aggressively rampaging modernity, and through reconstructed memories of the nomadic, ’barbaric’ past. They are, after all, the heirs of Genghiz Khan, Tamburlaine and many other groups of people who moved towards, and conquered, the West. This is a fundamental part of their reality and myth.
Yet throughout the work in this exhibition, the strongest impression is how people struggle to establish or retain an individual sense of creative integrity and power at a time when traditional society and its memories are being demolished around them by economic and political forces which are far beyond their control.
Natalya Dyu, a young artist of Korean extraction from Karaganda in Central Kazakhstan, captures perfectly such ironies in a short video Happystan, 2007 that counterpoints images of the alienated bleakness of the new pseudo-consumer society with a popular sentimental love ballad sung by Aliya Belyaeva.
Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev from Kyrgyzstan have reflected on recent turbulent political events in their country in their documentary film montage Revolution, 2005, to which they have added the incongruous soundtrack of Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King.
Kazakh artists such as Almagul Menlibayeva and Erbossyn Meldubekov, reflect on the vast natural resources of the steppe, on the rapid development of urbanisation, on the nation’s political heritage as well as on the myths of shamanism and explore how these have joined with other beliefs to create a view of the world that is both idealistically compassionate and cruelly truthful. Presented for the first time in Europe, Menlibayeva will be showing Transoxiana Dreams, 2011, a fantastically surreal mythological documentary- focused on the centaur-like fox spirits that populate the newly formed desert around the rapidly shrinking Aral Sea.
Almaty-based painter Rashid Nurekeyev satirises national stereotypes and figures of speech as well as the legacies of autocracy on post-Soviet Kazakh society. Timur Mirzakamedov, from Tashkent in Uzbekistan, presents a video work which focuses on the pervasive, controlling surrealism of television. In exquisitely delineated paintings, Mongolian artists from Ulan Bator such as Baasanjav Choijiljavin and Uuriintuya, both trained in the hieratic, traditional Buddhist-influenced Zurag style originally used to paint tankas, confront with an acerbic energy worthy of George Grosz the inequalities and conflicts within their newly forged society.
Between Heaven and Earth is curated by Berlin-based curator and writer David Elliott, former Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, Moderna Museet (the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Stockholm), the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Istanbul Modern, and the Biennale of Sydney. He has worked and published extensively on Russian, East European and Asian art as well as on many other aspects of modern and contemporary art.
A catalogue will be published to coincide with the exhibition and there will also be a programme of accompanying events. Please visit www.calvert22.org for full details.
For further information please contact Calvert 22 Press and Marketing Officer Giulia Crossley: press@calvert22.org / 020 7613 2141
About Calvert 22:
CALVERT 22 is the UK’s only not for profit foundation dedicated to the presentation of contemporary Art and Culture from Russian and Eastern Europe. With five exhibitions a year from both emergent and more established contemporary artists as well as a range of contextual events, performances and activities, Calvert 22 aims to interrogate existing preconceptions about the art and culture of these regions and propose new possibilities for cross-cultural understanding and exchange.
Visitor Information
Address: 22 Calvert Avenue, London E2 7JP Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday: 10am – 6pm; Sunday: 11am – 5pm Admission: Free Contact: +44 (0) 20 7613 2141| info@calvert22.org www.calvert22.org Nearest Tube: Shoreditch High St/ Old St / Liverpool St
