Kyrgyzstan Diaries #5

 Бишкек

I had a week full of art, with my work we continue with meetings and planning for the project, plus in my free time, I did a walking tour focus on visiting the studios of local artists.

With my coordinator, we decided to move on two parallel projects: one is the charity exhibition, which was our main plan, I'm confident that before the end of this month there will be one, the second is a series of art therapy workshops for kids. We met an Argentinian girl that wants to help us, and I hope I will see the first one.

 

During the walking tour, I had a premiere of a new statue that will be arranged in the city centre soon, the one that now is there didn't get good feedback from the audience.

The artists we visited had studied in different cities of Russia (Moscow, S. Petersbourg) in the 90s, at that period the realism from the Soviet period was not relevant anymore and in search of their own style they came back to Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyz art is connected to nature, which has a big connection with the population here, usually, artists depict quiet villages where they have spent their childhood or where they were during a brainstorm with others, mountains, horses and traditional games.

We knew two artists that had more or less the same background stories, and it surprises me how excellent are their works and that their paints are in several international museums but still they are not famous as they deserve.

We visited "the grand emptiness museum", this artist has this idea that by "becoming empty" he can be every time fresh in the way to be focused on his art and his metaphysical and spiritual dimension. All space of his house museum is used to make art alive. 

Honestly, I don't understand this museum and what the artist wanted to say, I just found it weird and trashy, a lot of different things all together in the same place. But art is not my field, probably my scientific background wants to give a reason to everything.

This picture out of the context is to talk about my passion for abandoned places and my project to visit an abandoned village in Kyrgyzstan. I should be able to go to a village not far from Bishkek with a friend that knows the place and wants to pose, in the way to have a shooting there and take some portraits. I will update you about it.