[oberlist] Fwd: Between Heaven and Earth: Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia, Calvert 22

[stefan rusu]

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From: e-Flux <info at mailer.e-flux.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 4:43 PM
Subject: Between Heaven and Earth: Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia,
Calvert 22
To: suhebator at gmail.com


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September 8, 2011

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*Calvert 22* <http://www.calvert22.org>
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Erbossyn Meldibekov, The Peak of Communism, Autumn, Winter, 2009
Beaten metal saucepan, diameter 35.5 cm, height 14 cm
Courtesy the artist and Rossi & Rossi, London *

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 *Between Heaven and Earth:
Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia*
14 September–13 November 2011

 *Calvert 22*
22 Calvert Avenue
London E2 7JP
Nearest Tube: Shoreditch High St / Old St / Liverpool St

Opening Hours:
Wednesday–Sunday: 12pm–6pm.

Admission: Free

+44 (0) 20 7613 2141
info at calvert22.org

www.calvert22.org

 *Between Heaven and Earth: Contemporary Art from the Centre of Asia* is a
ground-breaking exhibition which will bring to UK audiences a strong sense
of the overlooked, yet exceptionally vibrant contemporary art from the
former Soviet Republics of *Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan*, as well as from *Afghanistan and Mongolia*.

The persistent mythology of the Silk Road, as well as the 'Great Game'
played out between the British and Russian Empires in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, have dominated the Western view of these
mysterious lands. More recently, however, these rich cultural and physical
landscapes have been dismissed in the West as the 'Stans' and downgraded to
theatres of environmental degradation, religious conflict and war. The
result is a perception radically different from the truth: one that is
devoid of nuance and processed into inhuman clichés of a 'Borat style',
post-Soviet wasteland.

*Between Heaven and Earth* depicts a radically different 'landscape'.
Featuring 23 artists, many of whom have not been seen in the UK before, the
exhibition examines the recent emergence of a vital, critical and
self-confident contemporary art from across Central Asia which challenges
existing prejudices and stereotypes.

For over 5,000 years different cultures from both East and West migrated,
mixed and eventually prospered in the deserts, mountains, cities and steppes
between the Caspian Sea and the Mongolian plateau. Such hybridity was
fertilized by many different routes of trade between the great capitals of
China, Constantinople and the West.

The art developing now throughout the centre of Asia directly reflects this
complex history and examines the multifaceted nature of both power and
culture, often in shocking or humorous ways. The nomadic figure of the
shaman—a character appropriated for Western art by Joseph Beuys in the
1960s—appears as a sarcastic and surreal presence in the work of many of
these artists. Equally the spiritual experience which still accommodates
active belief in Animism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam is overlaid by
the deadweight of materialism.

Different aesthetic traditions also raise their heads in a number of ways:
through ancient myths and stories, through the bright, clashing colours of
ikat textiles and the architecture of 12th Century mosques, through the now
fading memories of the vast populations of Koreans, Western Europeans and
other ethnic groups who were deported to the region in the 1930s and '40s,
through folk customs that are still kept alive in the face of aggressively
rampaging modernity, and through reconstructed memories of the nomadic,
'barbaric' past. This is a fundamental part of the reality and myth for the
heirs of Genghiz Khan, Tamburlaine and many other groups of people who moved
towards, and conquered, the West.

he exhibition is dominated by an overarching sense of a people’s struggle
for individual expression and creative integrity at a time when traditional
society and its memories are being demolished by economic and political
forces far beyond the control of the individual.

*Between Heaven and Earth* is curated by Berlin-based curator and writer *David
Elliott*, former Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, Moderna
Museet in Stockholm, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Istanbul Modern, and the
Biennale of Sydney. He has worked and published extensively on Russian, East
European and Asian art as well as on many other aspects of modern and
contemporary art.

*Featured artists:* Vyacheslav Akhunov, Shaarbek Amankul, Said Atabekov,
Baasanjav Choijiljavin, Ulan Djaparov, Natalya Dyu, Mariam Ghani, Gulnara
Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev, Rustam Khalfin, Galim Madanov and Zauresh
Terekbay, Erbossyn Meldibekov, Almagul Menlibayeva, Timur Mirzakhmedov,
Saken Narynov, Aleksander Nikolaev, Ekaterina Nikonorova, Rashid Nurekeyev,
Aleksei Rumyantsev, Oksana Shatalova, Aleksei Shindin, Alexander Ugay,
Uuriintuya, Viktor Vorobyev and Elena Vorobyeva.

Curator talk by David Elliott, 14th September 7pm, at the gallery. For
details of additional events, please visit www.Calvert22.org


*About Calvert 22*
CALVERT 22 is the UK's only not-for-profit foundation dedicated to the
presentation of contemporary art and culture from Russia, CIS countries and
Eastern Europe and presents a dynamic programme of exhibitions, talks and
cross-disciplinary events.

Founded by Nonna Materkova, a Russian born, London based economist in May
2009 in Shoreditch, East London, Calvert 22 has subsequently achieved
widespread critical and public acclaim. Its mission is to create a unique
platform, through imaginative and active presentations, for the very best in
current art and culture from the former 'Eastern Bloc', whilst being a
catalyst for new possibilities of cross-cultural understanding and exchange.



 <http://www.calvert22.org>


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