Eurasian Cultural Alliance Public Association
Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty
Nurmakov str, 79
For all inquires please contact vladislavsludskiy@gmail.com
Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty
Nurmakov str, 79
For all inquires please contact vladislavsludskiy@gmail.com
ADYR-ASPAN
Immersive Exhibition
National Museum (Astana, Kazakhstan)
11TH OF APRIL – 30TH OF APRIL, 2023
National Museum (Astana, Kazakhstan)
11TH OF APRIL – 30TH OF APRIL, 2023
"For us, this exhibition is a kind of a rebirth. After numerous upheavals in recent years, it has become very important to start the process of exploring ourselves, our people, our cultural codes, and our heritage. That's why both the name of our group and the title of the exhibition 'ADYR-ASPAN' have a double meaning. On one hand, we have a combination of earth (mountain) and sky, the worlds standing for the earthly and the sublime. On the other hand, the adyraspan plant has such deep roots that it is very difficult to uproot. The meaning is that no matter what challenges the Kazakh people face, they always preserve their roots and regenerate," explain the artists.
The name of the art group is consonant with the name of the exhibition, and the curatorial work was carried out more in the form of consulting, based on the vision and concepts of the artists, and only then the text for the exhibition emerges, which in a sense blurs the familiar hierarchies between curator and artists. The members of the collective create their artworks individually but together, these objects resemble the language of one artist, a coherent statement that was discussed horizontally, without assigned center or a leader. The main narrative of the exhibition centers around the phenomenon of the steppe, which historically has been a place of horizontal social connections, exchange of ideas and goods, a fluid system of ethical and aesthetic coordinates, where people of different cultures had to find, and sometimes invent, a language of understanding each other.
All these reflections resonate with the figure of the artist, especially the artist as part of a collective, as the artist is also a collector and an agent of transmitting certain ideas, meanings, and artifacts.
This is why ADYR-ASPAN integrates a separate museum titled 'Amanat' at the center of the exhibition, where viewers can see national clothing, chests, and household objects in the museum's collection. The metaphor of a museum within a museum, a museum as part of an artistic statement, a living and open archive separated from the institution, becomes a negative space, a hidden third place within the body of the exhibition. That is why the interplay between the city and the steppe, expressed in the video art work 'City. Steppe', is a central part of the composition. The polyphony of cultures is aided by Natalya Ligay's artwork about her traumatic childhood memories following the bombings of the Georgian-Abkhazian War in 1992.
This is why ADYR-ASPAN integrates a separate museum titled 'Amanat' at the center of the exhibition, where viewers can see national clothing, chests, and household objects in the museum's collection. The metaphor of a museum within a museum, a museum as part of an artistic statement, a living and open archive separated from the institution, becomes a negative space, a hidden third place within the body of the exhibition. That is why the interplay between the city and the steppe, expressed in the video art work 'City. Steppe', is a central part of the composition. The polyphony of cultures is aided by Natalya Ligay's artwork about her traumatic childhood memories following the bombings of the Georgian-Abkhazian War in 1992.
ADYR-ASPAN carries the spirit of self-organization, where basic tasks such as financing exhibitions, producing art objects, their transportation, and display are also carried out by the members of the collective with minimal intervention, for example, from institutions. On the one hand, this can be seen as a manifestation of the academy's isolation from contemporary art, and on the other hand, as the autonomy of one from another. Together, the artists of the group reflect on their almost a decade-long collaboration, change the name of their collective, and open a new stage in the development of their ideas and visual vocabulary.
Photo taken by Artem Chursinov