The main merit of the Elpis Foundation with the exhibition YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia is that of delimiting the perimeter of a tile on which to reconstitute, for some time, a self – narration of peoples and lands that have long been completely absent from the international artistic landscape. Within this merit there is a further one, that of having entrusted the exhibition to two curators from the same areas as the artists, who also embody the generational transversality staged: Dilda Ramazan, born in 1993, originally from Kazakhstan, and Aida Sulova, born in 1979 in Kyrgyzstan.
Installation view of the group exhibition “YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia” curated by Dilda Ramazan and Aida Sulova, © Fabrizio Vatieri Studio, courtesy Fondazione Elpis, Milan
I happened to read, but cannot remember where, that one needs a lot of free time to make art. The notion of ‘free time’, in this case, is not about the vacuity of commitment; rather, it is appropriate to the long period of silence that the nations of Central Asia have gone through, first within the tightening barriers of the Soviet orbit and then during the troubled period of building a national identity. The constricted and contradictory ‘free time’ experienced by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan translates, now that it has finally found the cracks to expose its shoots, into a lush spring, intimately complex and eager to defend this complexity against all codes other than its own. Similarly to other phenomena that are shaking up an art that is increasingly struggling to find the reasons for Western centrality – some of the attempts to institutionalize these trends attempted at the last Venice International Art Exhibition come to mind – the artistic currents of Central Asia are witnessing more or less popular subjectivities, marginalized but not for this reason subordinate, that are now claiming their own necessity and their own explosive originality, the fruit, perhaps, of the long silence in which they came into being.
Installation view of the group exhibition “YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia” curated by Dilda Ramazan and Aida Sulova, © Fabrizio Vatieri Studio, courtesy Fondazione Elpis, Milan
YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia unfolds on the Foundation’s three floors in a narrative that does not identify a beginning or an end. Underlining this circularity is one of the most successful works in the exhibition. Horizontal Line from the series Öliara: The Dark Moon by Gulnur Mukhazanova runs along the staircase from the basement to the first floor in the form of a lush embroidery of synthetic fabrics held together with pins, underlining how easily historical narrative can be disguised and rewritten. Nurbol Nurakhmet with Never Touch the Ground chooses to paint on brass, a material from which paint can be removed without a trace, just like the imprints of history from a national narrative. Vyacheslav Akhunov deconstructs memory by means of violent erasures on texts and images; his apprentice and colleague Ester Sheynfeld collects the dust resulting from the erasures and compositely stores it in Petri dishes.
Installation view of the group exhibition “YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia” curated by Dilda Ramazan and Aida Sulova, © Fabrizio Vatieri Studio, courtesy Fondazione Elpis, Milan
It is not difficult to identify the possibilities of rewriting history as one of the exhibition’s topoi. It is counterpointed and complemented by the theme of the uncertainty inherent in the experience of migration. Figures, the migrants, who play an essential role in the economy of the Central Asian states, going so far as to constitute, as the curators point out, the source of one third of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP. Marina Bagarzali creates an emotional support line for expatriates; the Qizlar collective, proposes a series of video performances recorded on Telegram, exploding their place of origin, Tashkent; Marat Rayimkulov reflects on the condition of the contemporary nomad by means of minimalist animations. Kasiet Bekchanov in Looking for You reflects on the possibility of imagining a now distant context, combining memories and digital archives; Chyngyz Aidarov uses used mattresses, obtained through bartering, for a performance that measures in this space the dehumanization of migrants, who are left with sleep as their only free time (the toshok, the typical Kyrgyz mattress, is also at the center of Munara Abdhukakharova’s installation). Finally, in Alexey Rumyantsev’s remarkable The Wall, the migrants’ tenuous ties with their homeland, letters and phone calls, become the metaphorical mortar of a wall and, discreetly, creep into the viewer as if between bricks.
Installation view of the group exhibition “YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia” curated by Dilda Ramazan and Aida Sulova, © Fabrizio Vatieri Studio, courtesy Fondazione Elpis, Milan
Many other paths could be attempted around the works of these twenty seven artists – metaphorically rendered by Emil Tilekov’s labyrinths – who have been invited to make their presence felt in the most authentic and least exotic way possible. From the surprising set design by Aika Akhmetova, which opens the exhibition together with Rashid Nurekeyev’s survey marker, a series of parallel readings branch off: the pictorial tradition without intrusions in Temur Shardemetov; traditional inheritance in Said Atabekov, and especially feminine in Aïda Adilbek, Kasiet Jolchu and Sonata Raiymkulova, with its angry charge in Zhanel Shakhan; the constitution of a national identity in Anna Ivanova, Yerbossyn Meldibekov and Saodat Ismailova (also visible in a remarkable exhibition at Hangar Bicocca); Ulan Djaparov’s nature-themed digressions and Bakhyt Bubikanova’s religious ones. Performances by Daria Kim and Jazgul Madazimova complete the picture.
Installation view of the group exhibition “YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia” curated by Dilda Ramazan and Aida Sulova, © Fabrizio Vatieri Studio, courtesy Fondazione Elpis, Milan
The selection of artists is generous and the heterogeneity of the proposal can perhaps be disorienting; it cannot be denied that the objective of offering the most comprehensive overview of the artistic trends animating a section of the globe that has been resurfacing on the scene for less than thirty years is perfectly successful. The exhibition acts as a compendium of the aforementioned overflowing spring, while also restoring, incidentally or otherwise, the disorientation of the implosion of nation states and migration. The poignant, subtle survival of art-making through the ravages of history remains the star to follow for orientation, like the YOU ARE HERE sign on shopping mall maps.
Kamil Sanders
Info:
VV.AA. “YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia”
24/10/2024 – 13/04/2025
Fondazione Elpis
via Lamarmora 26, Milano
www.fondazioneelpis.org
Born in Venice in 1998, after graduating from high school, he moved to Milan where he studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. In 2023 he published his first essay for the Calibano series by Prospero Editore: “Tradizione e Trasgressione. Note dall’India per un’arte indipendente”. In 2024 he won the Europa in Versi Giovani prize, which was followed by the publication in 2025 of his anthology “sillabario del terribile incanto” by Quaderni del Bardo Editore. He is currently attending the two-year course in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at Naba in Milan.
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