“Heavily poetic: Contemporary Art in Tajikistan” 
        
Arts in Tajikistan are the youngest in Central Asia. In the 90’s, while other post-soviet countries were trying to place themselves in the international context, Tajikistan was engaged in civil war. And even though memories of the war is still dissolved in reality and outside the city one can still find destroyed remains of tanks, in the arts, war is hardly addressed. This traumatic reality cannot be conveyed through symbols. War has to be at a distance in time to be able to be discussed. Art is understood by Tajik artists as something incompatible with war, as a phenomenon of peace, though with numerous problems. The world reflected in art, is a comfortless and unfair world, but a poetic one.  Powerful poetic traditions, founded by Hafiz and Hayam (the Tajik language belongs to the Iranian language group), is widely spread and rooted in everyday life (for example, according to tradition, people at feasts “leave some vine for Hayam”.) 

New media art with its strong narrative component is rather a “visual poetry” then a continuation of a plastic tradition.  On the other hand, “literary potential” of new media discloses in a poetic (symbolic, image-bearing), and not in a narrative, journalistic way. Tajik art lacks pieces of “pure journalism” – a direct conviction of reality.  Subjects rather seem “to be stolen” from this world, presented as metaphors – like in his photo series “Bus Stops”, Jamshed Kholikov recorded different bus stops appearing along country roads like illuminated entities, aiming to brighten up one’s travel and the whole reality.  

Tajikistan is a country that provides cheap labor to other post-soviet countries due to unemployment and hardships. However in the arts of Tajikistan we do not witness direct references to these “heroes” of our times seeking better lives on foreign lands. Rather, we see the video work “Falak” (song of sorrow) by Jamshed Kholikov with its streets in the “town of women” from where men are missing. We cannot encounter direct illustrations of poverty, troubles and hard work, but poetic video sketches like the one of Gandjina Sharipova “Angel”, where girls collecting brushwood in the mountains in golden halo like some winged beings. Or the video work by Naimdjon Muminov “Trip to Sochi”, a lyrical-humorous “trip” in the rusty skeleton of a bus – all young people dreamt about traveling to the Russian resort Sochi, a symbol of happy holidays during Soviet times – even nowadays it has the certain inaccessible “heaven-like” expression. Or the ironic video of Surayo Tuychieva “Golden People” – medically corrected golden-teethed smiles— a parallel between this “symbol of prestige” and the cult of gold in the ancient East in the Middle Ages – the work does not restrain from the use of poetic parallelism.

Of course being poetic does not necessary mean serenity and being without conflicts – the expression can be quite harsh (video work of Bahrom Ismatov – “Scotch –speech”.) Poetry is a synonym for ambivalence and poli-semantism.  The careful eastern preference of allegory for expression here is composed with mistrust toward synonym not leaving room for multiple interpretation. 

In the photos of Jamshed Kholikov “Morning Ride”, “Goalkeeper” and “Girl on a Ball” genre scenes turned from three-dimensional space to flatness. This is a “fallen”, pinned-to-the-ground, “motionless”, “slithering” reality. A sharp criticism of the world the author lives in. The works evoke distinct feelings that the idea behind their creation does not exhaust critical intentions.

Similarly, the work “Stone Rain” by Nodira Madjidova, is also not only the symbol of danger, but also a great spectacle of moment of lightness and weightlessness.

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Exhibitions 2008