Rich tapestry: highlights of Central Asian contemporary art revisited
Plates, Erbossyn Meldibekov (2009)
Over the last decade Central Asian art’s place in the landscape of contemporary art has become increasingly more visible, finding a place at the Venice Biennale and being represented at the 2014 Art Dubai fair. In 2011, Calvert 22 staged Between Heaven and Earth: Contemporary Art from Central Asia. Curated by David Elliott, the exhibition contributed to a growing interest in the region and its cultural output. As Elliott discusses his experience of putting together the show on 3 December at London's Dash Arts, we look back at some of its most memorable works.
Erbossyn Meldibekov
Erbossyn Meldibekov’s work plays with stereotypes that surround Central Asia and turns them into preposterous images. His Plates (2009) series takes the form of ceramics, objects for which Central Asia is famous around the world, embellished with deliberately vague images that are superficially associated with the region. Hailing from Kazakhstan, Meldibekov’s plates are adorned with images of camels, rudimentary technology, weapons and vast desert lands — referring not to specific countries but to a vast undifferentiated region. As the clichés pile up, the more absurd this image of Central Asia becomes. We may be none the wiser about what it is like from Meldibekov’s work, but we can see how poor our common understanding of it currently is.
http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/3418/central-asian-artists-contemporary-art