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We Used to Be Seaweed creates a dialogue between historic and up to date views of the Aral Sea. Once the world’s fourth-largest lake, the Aral Sea has been depleted to an eighth of its measurement because of large-scale irrigation initiatives.
Hosted on the Savitsky Museum, this exhibition recontextualizes the museum’s well-known assortment of Soviet avant-garde and Turkestan modernism to open new conversations about identification, atmosphere, and transformation.
We covered the loss of the Aral Sea on this time lapse under previously.
The exhibition brings collectively up to date artists whose works handle the ecological, cultural, and historic transformations of the Aral Sea area.
Alexander Ugay deconstructs the ocean’s vanished horizon by way of his cameraless photographic work. Saodat Ismailova’s movies look at the extinction of the Turan tiger and the lives of three generations of Aral fishermen.
The2vvo contributes a sound sculpture combining discovered sounds, underwater and area recordings, and testimonies, exploring the interconnectedness of human and non-human life within the space.
Lilia Bakanova presents a textile set up about imaginary life within the Aral Sea, created from uncooked silk and cotton—supplies produced with water that was redirected away from the Aral Sea.
In dialog with chosen works from the museum’s assortment, these items mirror on the area’s histories, shared water assets, and the intertwined relationships between tradition, nature, and reminiscence.
What occurred to the Aral Sea by way of an artist’s lens:
This made a drastic impression on the local weather and life in Central Asia, primarily in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Against expectations, this panorama reveals placing magnificence moderately than melancholy: the desert blooms with a poignant tenderness; colours are muted by a superfine sandy powder, making a velvety contact; unknown grass smells of chemically flavored lollipops.
Now think about that on this distant city with no vacationers the place you employed the automobile, there’s a world-class assortment of Russian and Central Asian avant-garde. This is Savitsky museum, named after an artist who rescued work discarded by museums throughout the USSR within the 1960-70s. This city, Nukus, was so removed from the Soviet authorities, that the gathering survived. It not solely educated and impressed native artists but additionally contains their works, many depicting the Aral Sea all through the twentieth century.
This exhibition will create a dialog between historic and up to date views of the Aral Sea and the life round it. The Museum supplies an ideal backdrop for the exhibition, given its historical past of resilience and assortment of work depicting the area’s transformations.
– A photographic undertaking by a Kazakh photographer will bridge the Kazakh and Uzbek areas of the Aral, fostering understanding and sensitivity between communities by providing glimpses into one another’s lives and shared water challenges.Beyond wanting, touching, smelling and listening, the gallery is inviting individuals to become involved.
February 13 to March 12; Savitsky Nukus Museum of Art Rsaev Str., Nukus 23100,
Republic of Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan
Artists: