Contemporary Art as a Public Forum in Kazakhstan CAP PAPERS 191 JULY 2017 Alexandra Tsay is an independent research fellow in cultural studies and an art curator based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She is involved in PaperLab: Public Policy Research Laboratory and Open Mind. Previously, she worked as a Senior Lecturer at International Information Technologies University in Almaty. Alexandra is an alumna of University of Warwick (UK), where she earned an MA in International Cultural Policy and Management, and KIMEP University (Kazakhstan), where she earned a BA in International Journalism and Mass Communication. She was a research fellow at Public Policy Initiative Program of Soros Foundation Kazakhstan in 2014-2015. During her fellowship, Alexandra will explore the cultural public sphere in Kazakhstan. Her hypothesis is that the cultural public sphere and artistic expressions are becoming an important arena for public debates, criticism and inventions of counter-discourses in societies with restricted freedom of the press and a shrinking political public sphere. urgen Habermas describes the public governed.1 If freedom of expression is sphere as a space that can bring requisite for a public sphere to function, J individuals together to generate how does the public sphere operate in debates about the exercise of power and the societies with restricted freedom of speech? relationship between the governing and the In 2016, Kazakhstan was ranked 160th in the 1 Press Freedom Index produced by socialist Kazakhstan and its capacity to Reporters without Borders. It is marked by generate public debates, makes reference to legislative restrictions, censorship, and the the work of a range of contemporary Kazakh absence of strong independent media artists, including Said Atabekov and art- outlets.2 In closed societies, where group “Kyzyl Tractor,” Almagul governmental control prevents the Menlibayeva, Saule Suleimenova, Yerbossyn formation of a space for open public debate, Meldibekov, Yelena and Viktor Vorobyovy, the public sphere manifests itself in more Pasha Cas, and others. My goal here is to unconventional ways. In this paper, I analyze the main narratives of analyze the role of contemporary art as a contemporary art in Kazakhstan, which public sphere in Kazakhstan. I argue that include: (1) reimagining nomadism; (2) contemporary art constitutes an arena for constructing new identities; (3) social alternative narratives and oppositional critique; and (4) debates about current meanings, and contributes to launching new political issues. The research deploys several debates on online platforms and social qualitative methods of analysis: literature networks. review, interviews with local artists, critical analysis of artwork, and content analysis of The evident failure of Kazakh traditional online debates and discussions. In addition, media to create a public sphere triggers the I am myself a part of an art community in formation of online and offline Kazakhstan, and have curated several countercultural spheres. Due to contemporary art exhibitions involving governmental control and censorship, more than 20 contemporary artists. traditional mass media do not allow for dialogue between society and state. Critical Historical Background: voices therefore have to look for new channels of communication and produce Art in the Context of alternative narratives. In such a situation, Authoritarianism contemporary and street art becomes an important arena for free artistic expression. he history of fine art in Kazakhstan As an alternative and affective form of started with the Soviet period, when communication, art transcends the status T Russians introduced paintings to the quo and the established official discursive region as a new form of cultural product framework in less than open societies, that aimed to educate the masses and creating alternative narratives. support the Soviet ideological worldview.3 Contemporary and street art thus plays the Indeed, the first Kazakh painters—such as role of a public forum. It offers new Abylkhan Kasteev (1904-1973) and Kanafiya platforms for dialogue and debates through Telzhanov (1927-2013)—studied in the cultural production of new discourses, institutes and art academies in Moscow; intervening in urban public space and many works that depicted the region were engaging people in discussion around also created in Moscow. artwork and art actions on online platforms and social networks. Kazakh fine art has its origins in socialist realism, a movement created by merging This article, an empirical study on the role ideology, propaganda, and aesthetics. Boris of contemporary artistic expression in post- Groys argues that, “Socialist realism was not 2 supposed to depict life as it was, because life describes the relationship between Russia was interpreted as being constantly in flux and Central Asia using concepts from and in development—specifically in postcolonial theory; she argues that through “revolutionary” development, as it was Orientalist images, the Communist Party officially formulated.”4 Socialist realism was was able “to pursue several of its goals, looking toward something that has not yet namely state unification, imperial expansion come into existence, toward a certain dream and the acceleration of national of the socialist future, toward the ideals of a differences.”6 The Soviet state used art as a socialist world. It rejected the idea of tool for achieving political goals and autonomy in art, instead considering art as establishing its dominance through the but one element in a wider socialist realm, complete demolition of preexisting cultural an instrument that supported the heritage. The government focused on art’s construction of a desired future and the functional and instrumental value, and was creation of the new socialist individual. It interested in instrumentalizing art as was a creative method that valued art for its propaganda. social relevance. The Soviet center had strong feelings about the scenes, landscapes, and subjects that had to be depicted in paintings. Joseph Stalin famously remarked that art should be national in form and socialist in substance, a phrase that became the manifesto of art production in national republics, including Kazakhstan. Artists depicted scenes of modernization and the construction of a new world: new combine factories against the backdrop of a mountain landscape symbolized the changes that Soviet rule had brought to the region. Painting was a means to educate, to construct official and Abylkhan Kasteev, “Turksib,” 1969 mainstream narratives of Soviet power, which (unlike Tsarist Russia) sought to The construction of the new man and the represent itself as anticolonial. The official new world required the eradication of past themes artists could work on were rapid heritage, and the destruction of previous modernization, liberation from archaic cultural identity. Boris Groys writes that in traditions, and economic development. The Russia, the October Revolution constituted Communist Party did not allow any a radical break with the past, destroying alternative perspectives on the radical social individual and collective heritage.5 In and cultural changes that were taking place. Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the Though nomads were made sedentary on a destruction of previous cultural identity was massive scale under Soviet rule, a process even more radical, since the relationship that caused famine and resulted in the between Moscow and Alma-Ata was a deaths of nearly one-third of the Kazakh relationship between center and periphery, population (another third of the population between dominant and subordinate culture. fled to neighboring countries), socialist Art historian Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen 3 realism was supposed to show only the started to break the rules of traditional bright side of the road to the desired realist painting, which was associated with socialist future. official educational institutions and the ideologically-restricted socialist realism. Art after Independence: Arystanbek Shalbayev, along with Smail Traditional and Con- Bayaliyev, Said Atabekov, and Moldakul Narymbetov (who passed away in 2012) temporary organized the art group “Kyzyl Tractor.” Arystanbek Shalbayev, a pioneer of uring the Soviet period, the state contemporary art in Kazakhstan, said that heavily subsidized art, considering the radical turn in their perception of art D it a form of propaganda and the occurred in Shymkent in the late 1980s, in only creative outlet that could serve official the studio of artist and art teacher Vitaliy purposes. At the same time that the Western Simakov:9 “I realized that art is not a art world was going through a process of mimesis, is not a copying of reality, but it is commodification, creating a market for art, a creation of new space, of a new concept Soviet art was part of a political project. and a new gaze.” Shalbayev pointed out that Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was attending an art academy at that governmental support for art lives on in time, but he felt that he did not receive official organizations. In Kazakhstan, the “sufficient knowledge and skills there.” “The post-Soviet government to some extent story of our group started with a search for maintains an instrumental approach toward newness in art, we experimented with media art, using it as a tool to transmit and and performances and we were eager to promote state ideology. State-supported art understand through our practices what art continues the