I only take pics

 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

 Сары-Челек The last week was quite intense, we had a development in our project: we found two possible locations for our events and we started to renovate them. The first one is a house just outside Bishkek, with a big garden and a relaxing atmosphere. We put in order the garden and cleaned where need it. Our Idea is to use it for big workshops, or maybe weekends workshops.  The second option is my coordinator studio, we think that it can be useful for regular events, maybe art therapy for kids. I liked the afternoon we put in order the studio because we were trying to understand where to put the different art and installations, which was very interesting. We had a meeting in this place with artists and planned the future activities, I think we are on the right way with our project. During the weekend, I visited Sary-Chelek national reserve, there there are several lakes and we saw most of them with a really nice hike, and we swam in two of them. The trip was really beautiful: I knew

Bishkek This week I didn't travel to the countryside, I stayed in Bishkek working with my coordinator. We had several meetings, with artists and people that want to collaborate with us on the project. Probably we will be able to have some workshops where artists with different backgrounds will work together to produce arts that will be sell in one, or maybe more, exhibition/s. During my free time, I visited different parts of the city, by myself and also on a walking tour. I feel that I started to become familiar with this city, I have still a lot of things to learn, but I'm not just a tourist anymore. Now I have also a photographic project in my mind, if there will be a development in the idea I will let you know in the next diaries. With the walking tour, we visited where the industrial part of the city started. Almost 100 years ago Interhelpo organisation comes to the city from Czechoslovakia with the idea to develop the country to industrialisation.  There are still the fir

 Сон-Куль The most important event of this week was the first trip outside Bishkek to a famous lake in the country, but first I want to talk about 2 things, first, finally, my coordinator arrived and we started work together. We were having only online meetings, which is not the best option to know someone else. I enjoyed meeting him in person, now I have a good feeling about our project and my staying in Kyrgyzstan. I took this picture in a village on the way to the Song Kul lake Second, last week I didn't mention that I did a reportage with another association. I was able to get in contact with the founder of this association that is willing to give a place to the homeless of the city, he was looking for a photographer to do a reportage about the situation of these people in Bishkek. With a journalist and a volunteer of the association, we went to look for the homeless and interview them to understand their stories and needs. It was an intense day, full of emotions, I understood

Bishkek I would like to share my experience in Kyrgyzstan with these, probably, weekly diaries. I have the opportunity to live in Bishkek for two months, while I will volunteer with a contemporary art association, if you check my profile description you can understand that I am a chemist, but I like to face my comfort zone and learn, so I accepted this challenge. For the next two months, I will live with a local family, a Kyrgyz couple with 3 kids. Till now everything is super, they are really welcoming and supportive. My first week was full of new connections and new things to know about this culture and the city. My volunteering activity at the moment is mainly getting in touch with people, artists or volunteers that want to join the project. In this way, I have the opportunity to visit the main places of the city and at the same time listen to a lot of nice stories. Under you can find some pictures of places I visited this week, I want to put the focus on the soviet architecture tha