Calvert 22 Presents Contemporary Art From Central Asia

Written by Stephen Killick Tuesday, 06 December 2011 21:31

London.- Calvert 22 is proud to present "Between Heaven and Earth: Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia", on view from September 14th through Novermber 13th. "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 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 Mirzakhmedov, 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 D.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.

Calvert 22 is the UK’s only not for profit foundation focused on contemporary art and culture from Russia, CIS Countries and Eastern Europe. Calvert 22 was founded by Nonna Materkova, a St Petersburg born financier who first came to the UK on a British Council Scholarship to study economics at the London School of Economics. She has been based in London since the late 1990s. She is the founder director of Roslink, a London based Corporate finance consultancy as well as a dedicated patron of contemporary arts. Free to develop independently, outside commercial gallery constraints, its mission is to create a unique platform, through imaginative and active presentations, for the very best in current art from the former ‘Eastern bloc’ and to bring to light new developments in forms, ideas and cultural practice from these regions and explore relationships and dynamics, often not visible on the surface and especially not represented by the mass media. Calvert 22 supports both emergent and more established artists through a carefully designed and contextualised programme of exhibitions and events, and aims to further illuminate their practice and context through original publications, related talks and discursive events. Calvert 22 provides a central resource for the study and research of contemporary art and culture from across this rapidly changing and complex geographical arena and is committed to creating a forum which not only challenges and interrogates existing preconceptions about its focused regions but is a catalyst for new possibilities of cultural exchange and understanding. Key to this aim is the dissemination of knowledge, ideas and information to a broad and diverse audience that extends from the local to the global, and allows multiple conversations to unfold. Launched in May 2009, Calvert 22 represents a significant new presence in the international contemporary art world having achieved widespread critical acclaim for the quality and range of its programme. Importantly, it has being recognised for its potential to lead the way in cultural development, not least by leading figures within the Russian and UK Governments. Visit the foundation's website at ... http://www.calvert22.org

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