Not quite Invisible
This post is breaking my long silence. I moved back to Ukraine where I was deeply absorbed into my thoughts. Nevertheless I didn't laze, I was working hard on my new projects. Here I want to share one of them. During my life in Paris I met few new friends, real friends. They became closer to me than many-many other people whom I have known for a while. They are a real #dreamteam: Dina Baitassova, Laurent Lehmann and Indira Duyssebaeva.
We felt a strong clash of energies and ideas among us. Therefore starting at the New Year we decided to cooperate and try to somehow objectify our intentions. Venice Biennale was chosen as a pilot project to implement together with a new team member – me. WE aimed to give life to important exhibition-research.
For the second time in the history of the nation, Kazakhstan had its own pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Despite not being “official” attendees, the republic of Kazakhstan created a compelling pavilion, entitled “Protagonists, Invisible Pavilion”. The show begets the question of how it is possible for art from KZ to navigate in the environment of global art.
This year IADA brought together 7 stars of the Kazakh contemporary art scenes to the 56th Venice Biennale. The project was divided into three distinct but interlocking parts: workshops during the first week of May; public talks on 5th of May; and preview of the 7 performances in the end of the project. The public talks were open to everyone and were given by Sara Raza, Leeza Ahmadi, Olga Kisseleva, Vladislav Sludskiy and Aliya de Tiesenhausen. The workshop reflected the performative nature of artists’ work. It is performance, film, installation, philosophy and digital art. This creative workshop was led by the artist Sarah Trouche and Paul Ardenne an art historian, who is the curator of the Luxembourg pavilion this year.
The event has attracted professionals and dealers from across the world, all keen to get a slice of the growing Central Asian market. Kazakhstan has a lot of great contemporary artists who can represent the republic. Artists living in the diaspora and the local gang operating from Astana and other towns in KZ. The likes of Askhat Akhmediyarov, Kamilla Gabdullina, Syrlybek Bekbotayev,Aza Shade, Ada Yu, Assel Kadyrkhanova, Alpamys Batyrov….I could go on and on.
The main goal of this project is to attract the attention to the importance of dialogue on the future of the art scene of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, which doesn’t have a Pavillion this year. Talking about art from another part of the world could be useful for Kazakhstan in creating its own artistic identity. Meeting the rest of the world would allow Kazakhstan artists to analyse their own experiences more deeply.
Being at Venice feeds back into this country’s art-environment planning while also telling the world that what we do here has its own distinctive character. Domestic realities have to be negotiated and balanced with the expectations of an international art audience.
We tried to gather and illustrate significant Kazakhstani subjects: history, architecture, politics, religion, economics and media, representing a complex Kazakh reality as a paradigm of local and global conditions.
It’s a hugely stimulating event for the artists. Some of them have visited Venice for the first time. It’s so strange that oil-rich country can’t provide support to IADA. Being a newcomer to Venice, KZ has had to rent an exhibition venue for the duration of the exhibition. This time our talks were staged at the Navy Officer’s Club - Arsenale.
The outcome of the event is an IADA-staged professional show that successfully introduced new names to a global public. However Kazakhstan still needs to secure a permanent venue and the moment is right for this country to be there. The presence of national pavilions makes the Venice Biennale unique among other art manifestations. The positions of the pavilions relative to each other reveals in a remarkably accurate way the history of transnational alliances by which states continue to promote their political, economic, and military interests.
To sum up. The KZ exhibition, titled Invisible Pavilion did me proud. It was incredibly exciting for me to be part of this vibrant event.