Suns And Neons Above Kazakhstan. Group Exhibition. YARAT Cotemporary Art Space
YARAT Contemporary Art Spacepresents Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan – a group exhibition of 16 artists, including 5 emerging Kazakhstani artists.
Theexhibition aims to deconstruct a romanticized image of Kazakhstan as a vast andlargely unpopulated geography that for decades played upon the collectiveimagination. It addresses various narratives of national history, from apost-colonial to a critical perspective, while discovering, mapping and voicingchanging attitudes and concerns across generations. The exhibition explores theshifts and breaks within the construct of Kazakh national and cultural identityduring a short timespan of its independence. It is an exhibition of Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan, oflandscape and cityscape. Of artists dealing with history and nation buildingand an emerging generation concerned with private life and the emancipation ofthe individual within the isolated reality of city life.
Visualarts were introduced in Kazakhstan with Soviet art schools, established in the1930s as a form of nation building. Through the 1940s, many practitioners ofthe avant-garde (then fallen out of favor) were deported to Kazakhstan,resulting in a surprising and mostly undocumented emergence of a non-conformistart scene. This continued through the 50s till the early 90s with strongconnections to the Moscow and Leningrad non-conformist and conceptualistcircles.
Withthe break of the Soviet Union, a radical shift took place in the Kazakh artscene. Some practices continued the conceptualist line looking at their ownposition as part of a Central Asian narrative, while a younger generationsearched for a new language. These artists raised questions on postcolonialCentral Asia, which found itself in between the revival of national and ethnic imageryand forced processes of identity construction. Playing with provocation, humor,irony and romanticism artists explored the contradictory moments within therhetoric of authenticity, addressing national independence, recent history andsocial identity.
Since1991, like other CIS countries, Kazakhstan went through various socio-economicshifts radically changing its cultural fabric. An emerging generation ofartists, growing up during the booming 2000s, did not experience thenationalistic euphoria of the 1990s and do not romanticize their country's pastor heritage. They are the new city kids,aware of global networks and social media, resisting confinement and societaldesignations around them. Their concerns are much more individual and theirworks draw both from illusions and disillusionments, hope and disappointmentsof life entrapped within the city.
