Kristina Makeeva's fabulous fashion shoot at the St Petersburg mosque
Saint Petersburg Mosque was founded in 1910 in honour of the Emir of Bukhara, as a result of Central Asia joining Russia.
This occurred under Tsar Alexander III, when the court was trying to respect the interests of the Muslim community in St Petersburg, in which there were more than 8,000 people.
When opened in 1913, the mosque was the largest church in Russia. It can accommodate up to 5,000 worshippers. Two minarets reach 49 meters, and the dome rises 39 meters high.
The location of the mosque was symbolic, sited opposite the Peter and
Paul Fortress, in the city centre. The architect Nikolai Vasilyev patterned the mosque after the 15th century Samarkand building Gur-e-Amir, where Tamerlane’s ashes are kept. The dome is almost an exact copy.
The permission to purchase the site
was given by Emperor Nicholas II in Peterhof on 3 July 1907. That
autumn, the committee approved the project. The architect was Nikolai
Vasilyev, the engineer Stepan Krichinsky, and construction was overseen
by academic Alexander von Hohen. The building facade was made by
combining both oriental ornaments and turquoise blue mosaic.
View of the mosque in St Petersburg
A special committee was formed in 1906 to raise 750,000 rubles within 10
years for the construction of the mosque. It organised collections in
Russian towns and provinces, receiving donations from many
sponsors.
The biggest donor was Said Abdoul Ahad, Emir of Bukhara, who
undertook all expenses for the building.
Skilled craftsmen from Central Asia took part working on the mosque.
The facades are decorated with sayings from the Koran in characteristic kufi and suls scripts. Internal columns are made from green
marble. Women pray on the first floor, above the western part of the
hall. The mosque was covered in huge carpets, especially woven by Central Asian craftsmen.
In 1940 Soviet authorities banned
services and turned the building into a medical equipment storehouse. At
the request of the first Indonesian President, Sukarno, ten days after
his visit to the city, the mosque was returned to the Muslim Religious
community of St. Petersburg in 1956.
A major restoration of the
mosque was undertaken in 1980 and again in 2017.
On an Uzbek Journeys tour, you will have the chance to see the Emir Of Bukhara's Summer Palace. The Emir also built the extravagant Kagan Palace, near Bukhara, which was built for a visit of Tsar Nicholas II to Turkestan, which did not eventuate.
If you go to St Petersburg prior to or after Central Asia, then a visit to this mosque should definitely be on your program.
Detail of 19th century silk ikat chapan (coat) from Bukhara
If you are serious about ikat fabrics, then this database will be of interest to you.
Sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation, the five-year research and academic project "Modernization of Tradition: Uzbek Textile Heritage As Cultural And Economic Resource" produced various outcomes. One is the publication of an online, multimedia database about Uzbek ikat.
The German and Uzbek researchers sourced images found in Uzbek and European museums, in private collections, in literary sources (books, magazines, periodicals), in textile shops, and textile markets in Uzbekistan, and in the cities of Andijan, Namangan, Marghilan, Bukhara, and Tashkent.
The database is for scientific, educational, industrial, and handicraft production purposes. It is also a resource for designers, textile professionals, ethnographers, textile anthropologists, cultural mediators, artists, ethnologists and students.
Detail of 19th century silk velvet ikat, known as bakhmal
It is a serious contribution to the field. Unfortunately, the website is a little "clunky" to use.
Registration, which is free, is required to explore the database. Then you can view and search ikats. There is a 521-page downloadable book in pdf format with extensive notes on each item.
Incredibly talented Uzbek textile designer, Dilyara Kaipova, took Tashkent's inaugural International Applied Arts Festival by storm.
Two large spaces in the Art Gallery of Uzbekistan (NBU) are dedicated to her textile pieces.
These rooms have been consistently packed with viewers and Tashkent social media is a-buzz with commentary on Kaipova's work.
The pieces include new work from her "Soft Life" project.
Additionally, some of the pieces exhibited at the 2016 International Exhibition of Contemporary Art in Tashkent, depicting Mickey Mouse, Batman, Darth Vader and other symbols of consumer culture are displayed.
Australian-based globetrotter Barbara Flett travelled with Uzbek Journeys to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in spring 2017. With fellow travellers, she discovered the life-changing scrumptiousness of Kyrgyz homemade jams.
There is a previous Uzbek Journeys post on 5 Reasons for Visiting Kyrgyzstan – the mountain scenery, craftsmanship, history, culinary influences and a sense of time travel to past eras – but this catalogue of reasons, while valid, misses another important enticement.
Kyrgyzstan, I venture to nominate, could potentially claim a World Heritage listing for its jam.
The culinary skill of Kyrgyz households in jam making stands unrivalled, but there are reasons why this is not widely appreciated outside the country.
While visiting in May 2017, our tour group first discovered this particular skill at Mairam Omurzakova's house in Kochkor.
After a demonstration of her renowned skills in felt carpet making, her hospitality extended to lunch which included, among other delights, a superlative homemade raspberry jam. When some in our group suggested that she might include a sideline in making jam to sell to her visitors, Mairam looked surprised. She explained that her garden only had enough raspberry bushes to make jam for her family and the odd tour group who came to lunch.
It was the same in the other home stays or hotels on the trip. Fantastic jam – all of it of the homemade variety and mainly sourced from the contents of the garden.
Mairam Omurzakova (centre), not only a master felter, but also a master jam maker.
Image: Rosemary Sheel
In a country of largely subsistence farming, Kyrgyz families will usually have their own plot for growing vegetables, their fruit trees and berry canes and their livestock.
The jam produced by the women of the family is for household consumption and not for commercial sale.
According to Wikipedia, while agriculture makes up a substantial proportion of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP, only 7 % of the country is suitable for farming. But from that 7%, Kyrgyz cooks are able to conjure the most delicious, dark and intensely flavoured jams our group had ever tasted.
And once having sampled the jammy offering at Mairam’s house, we went on a jam sampling spree at every meal.
As well as raspberry jams, we discovered a delicious black cherry jam, several varieties of plum and apricot plus of course strawberry jams. Most interesting of all was jam made from the berries of the sea buckthorn bush which grows wild in the Kyrgyz mountains. These yellow or orange berries produce a jam the colour of clear marmalade but with a tart citrusy flavor. Sea buckthorn is high in anti-oxidants so this jam was not only delicious but also good for you.
Berries of the sea buckthoron plant
In researching Kyrgyz jams, we discovered that jam could be eaten at every meal.
For breakfast with porridge or yoghurt or as an accompaniment to blinis or pancakes.
Kyrgyz lunchtime spreads would always include delicious bread for sharing and a jam or two which would already be laid out on the table. So one could, and we frequently did, get stuck into the bread and jam combination between even the savoury courses.
Then there are Kyrgyz desserts such as borsook – a sort of fried doughnut - which is also traditionally served with jam.
And finally there is the Kyrgyz practice of sweetening their tea with jam instead of sugar. Particularly delicious is a spoonful or two of black cherry jam in tea which produces something which closely resembles a hot Ribena drink.
So if travelling to Kyrgyzstan, please sample all the homemade jams on offer. After all you won’t be able to buy some to take home - the locals aren’t sharing this particular bounty with the rest of the world.
Range of delicious jams available at One Village One Product, Karakol. This Japanese NGO works with women of the Naryn region. And their delicious jams are for sale.
Flavours include: sea buckthorn, chamomile, pine cone, dandelion, walnut, barberry.
Ring & earrings from Ulughbek Holmuradov's Cotton Collection
Autumn is a wonderful time to be in Uzbekistan. The sky is blue, the many parks are golden and the choice of theatre, exhibitions and concerts is impressive.
Of special interest this autumn is the inaugural Tashkent International Festival of Decorative and Applied Arts, 6 - 11 November.
The festival takes place in six venues across the city and showcases the works, not only of artisans from each region of Uzbekistan, but also from 15 countries including Great Britain, Iran, Italy, China, Latvia, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
The event is aimed at preserving the national values and traditions of
Uzbekistan, developing Uzbek art and providing
the opportunity for the Uzbek creative community to exchange ideas and collaborate with foreign artisans. Uzbek Journeys plans a series of posts about this important, stimulating celebration.
At the Art Gallery of Uzbekistan (NBU), a very exciting exhibition
opened, which included jewellery from Uzbekistan's most innovative
contemporary jeweller, Ulughbek Holmuradov, and Iranian jewellers Maryam
Tabaie and Niloofar Salehi.
Holmuradov design ring :mother-of-pearl, chalcedony, turquoise
Educated at the Tashkent institute of Architecture and Construction
and later studying with master L. Avakyan, Ulughbek Holmuradov opened his studio, Holmuradov Design,
in 2010.
His studio specialises in interior design, furniture and
jewellery. Indeed, the coolest cafes in Tashkent *wear* his designs.
Ulughbek draws not only on traditional
Central Asian forms, which he fuses with a contemporary philosophy, but
he is also playfully inventive with new forms and materials.
This exhibition also featured the works of Iranian designers Maryam Tabaie and Niloofar Salehi. Maryam was born in Isfahan, the renowned, historical city of Iran, but she spent her childhood in the Netherlands.
She has a Master of Arts degree in Industrial design from Tehran Azad University and currently lives and works in Tehran. Like Ulughbek Holmuradov, she draws on traditional concepts and patterns and then reworks them into fresh, contemporary pieces.
Her work highlights the explosive, creative energy of Iran's contemporary art and design scene.
From concept to necklace - Maryam Tabaie's design
The works of these designers are drawing large crowds at the exhibition. Locals are proud of the creativity and quality of Holmuradov's work and simultaneously impressed with the glimpse of Iran's creative scene that Tabaie and Salehi's pieces provide.
Below is a selection of their stunning work. The designers are active on Instagram and Facebook: Ulughbek Holmuradvov:
http://www.holmuradov.com/
https://www.instagram.com/holmuradov_design/
https://www.facebook.com/HolmuradovDesign/
Afghan muralists of the ArtLords group paint Nancy Dupree, calling her "My hero.
The honest Guardian of Afghanistan’s culture".
American historian Nancy Dupree spent half a century working to preserve Afghanistan's heritage from the ravages of the Soviet invasion, the civil war and the Taliban era.
Her Herculean efforts were not forgotten by the country's citizens when she died last month in the capital Kabul.
Even at age 90, Dupree was still focused on running and organizing the Afghanistan Center Kabul University (ACKU) where 60,000 Afghan documents are housed.
She wrote five guidebooks on Afghanistan, dying following a protracted battle with heart, kidney and lung problems at a hospital in her adopted city.
Days after her death, Afghan government officials along with foreign diplomats, colleagues and friends packed out a memorial ceremony, and praised her legacy at the Afghanistan Center Kabul University where the ceremony was held.
She had amassed a huge collection of valuable books, maps, wartime photographs and rare recordings of folk music at the ACKU where she also lived. Now the desk she worked at stands unoccupied, but honoured.
Afghans mourned Mrs. Dupree by posting condolences on social media. Both the current and former presidents of the country expressed their deep sorrow over losing her, as well as countless ordinary citizens.
Nancy Dupree
Dupree came to Afghanistan as the wife of an American Diplomat in 1962. Born and raised in India, Dupree graduated from high school in Mexico City and attended Barnard College and Columbia University, studying Chinese history.
She began writing about Afghanistan shortly after arriving in the country, where she met Louis Hatch Dupree, an archeologist and anthropologist, who soon became her editor.
They were both married at the time, but would go on to divorce their spouses and spend decades traveling Afghanistan together.
Their book on Afghanistan "Five o’clock Follies" brought them international fame.
When Soviet troops were deployed to Afghanistan in 1979, the Duprees were forced to leave the country. Louis was briefly imprisoned after the communist government accused him of spying for the C.I.A.
Rather than return to the United States, they moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, a hub for displaced Afghans. Here they were shocked to find that documents and books of cultural value were being sold and used for fuel.
In order to preserve as many documents and books as possible, they founded the Agency Coordination Body for Afghan Relief, and collected all documents related to Afghanistan’s history and culture.
Louis Dupree died of cancer in 1989, just as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, but Nancy continued their vision. Waiting out the civil war and the Taliban occupation in Pakistan, she tried to preserve Afghan heritage by forging contacts with moderate Taliban officials, although these efforts bore little fruit.
New faculty builing at the Afghanistan Centre, Kabul University
In 2005, Nancy returned to Kabul, taking the material she had collected during her stay in Peshawar to Kabul in hessian sacks.
A building of Afghan marble, stone and cedar, Afghanistan Center Kabul University, became her safe harbour. Here the books, photographs, maps, and other rare documents, she and Louis had collected were digitized so as to be accessible to other universities in cities such as Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Mazer-e-Sharif.
Dupree continued curating thousands of documents reflecting years of conflict and political upheavals, refugee work and international involvement in the war-torn country.
“One of our focuses is to promote the whole concept and methodology of doing decent research,” Dupree told the Guardian in 2013. She also established the Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree Foundation, aiming to promote the history and culture of Afghanistan.
In an interview with Washington Post, she explained the motivation behind her organisation's battle to strengthen Afghan heritage.“What we are trying to do is inject this idea that to have a sense of identity is what makes you strong,” she said.
This article was first published on 29 March 2017 onGlobal Voices Online. It was written by Ezzatullah Mehrdad and reposted with permission.
Yosif Roane's sometimes diffuse recollections narrow to a laser-like
focus when he discusses certain anecdotes from his childhood, like
exploring nature in Uzbekistan and creeping around Red Army barracks in
the Soviet republic.
He's less mobile these days, his walker compensating for a bad right
leg. During a recent interview, Yosif shuffled into the room wearing a
brown tweed jacket, a white tie, and a black shirt with gray stripes
that matched his thinning hair and neat mustache and soul patch.
He erupts in laughter after telling about a time he saw a man from
Africa on a bus he boarded with his family in Tashkent. "I said: 'Mama,
Mama, look! Look at that black man!' And everybody on the bus cracked
up. I was almost as black as he was. And everybody said, "You mean to
tell me you don't know you're black'" Yosif says.
Like many other black Americans who came to the Soviet Union during this
period, Yosif's father said that he experienced less racism there than
back home. He told journalist Yelena Khanga that the only incident he could recall was
when two white Americans hurled racial slurs at him in a Moscow
barbershop and were thrown out after the barbers learned what they had
said.
The elder Roane extended his contract to work in the Soviet Union in
1934 and was sent to Soviet Georgia to work at a tomato cannery. The
family remained for another three years before Soviet authorities
delivered an ultimatum to the group of African-American agronomists:
Give up their U.S. citizenship and stay, or leave the country.
George Tynes and family
This turning point came in the fateful year of 1937, at the height of
Stalin's Great Terror.
This campaign is estimated to have resulted in
more than 1 million killings by the Soviet state amid an atmosphere of
rising paranoia. According to Khanga, it nearly ensnared her grandfather
and Joseph Roane's recruiter, Oliver Golden.
She writes that Golden learned that the Soviet secret police had come in
the middle of the night to arrest him while he was away on vacation in
southwestern Russia. When he returned home, Khanga writes, he went to
the local secret service office and asked to be arrested "if you think
I'm an enemy of the people."
"Comrade Golden, don't get so upset. We've already fulfilled the plan of
arrests for your area. Go home and work in peace," she quotes the
police official as responding.
According to Yosif, the increasingly perilous political situation in the
Soviet Union played no role in his father's decision to bring his
family back home. He says Joseph Roane's mother was ill. "He wanted to
come back here quickly to get to see what he could do for my
grandmother," he says. "My father loved his mama."
Speaking to Khanga, Yosif's father portrayed his return as bittersweet.
"In just a few years -- you'd be surprised -- you could forget what
segregation was like," she quotes him as saying. "When Golden spoke at
my college, I didn't believe him when he said there was no segregation
in the Soviet Union. Why should I? But it proved to be absolutely true."
Soviet propaganda poster: Under Capitalism (left), Under Socialism (right)
'Nobody Called Me Stalin'
Yosif was not the first child of an African-American to be born in the
Soviet Union.
In the late 1920s, a few years before Yosif's birth,
Golden fathered a son named Ollava who went on to become a ballet dancer
and choreographer and died in the Russian city of Vladimir in 2013, at
age 87.
But based on open sources and research published by Carew, he was the
first whose parents were both African-Americans. "I'm the first black
American born in the Soviet Union," Yosif says emphatically.
Almost all of the children born to these African-American expatriates in
the 1920s and 1930s had Soviet mothers and were Americans only on their
father's side. "They all practically stayed in the Soviet Union," says New York-based
filmmaker Yelena Demikovsky, who has interviewed numerous descendants of
these African-Americans for her film Black Russians: The Red
Experience, which is in postproduction.
Yosif, however, returned with his family to Kremlin, Virginia, at age 5
and settled in the clapboard home that he still owns. On a recent visit
to the house through rolling fields of green spring wheat, a rusty
windmill -- once a sign of the Roane family's self-sufficiency and
affluence -- creaked and whined as it twirled.
Langston Hughes with a group of Soviet writers, 1933
Yosif's father became a widely respected local educator, teaching at
A.T. Johnson High School in the nearby town of Montross, one of the
first high schools for African-American students in the area.The school, which opened the same year that the Roane family returned
from the Soviet Union, was turned into a museum under the direction of
Marian Ashton.
She co-produced the documentary Kremlin To Kremlin along with Jon
Bachman of Stratford Hall, a museum that is part of the Virginia
Historical Society. "My passion for sharing this...is to introduce and
engage the minds of all persons, especially the youth," Ashton says.
"Hopefully they notice that these are ordinary people who just happened
to have done some extraordinary things."
The
schoolhouse museum that Ashton runs features a small exhibit space that
includes artifacts from Joseph Roane's life, including a fur hat and
vest that he brought back from Uzbekistan.
Sitting amid the relics
of his father's life, Yosif says that he did not speak English -- only
Russian -- when he returned with his family from the Soviet Union. "When
my mother and father didn't want me to know what they were talking
about, they spoke English," he says.
Nearly eight decades later,
Yosif knows only a few words of Russian. Greeting a reporter at the
museum, he says, "Idi syuda" -- or "come here" -- with a decent Russian
accent. He rattles off the word for dog -- "sobaka" -- and kitty-cats --
"kiski" -- and adds that he once had a dog named Tuzik, a Russian
analogue to popular English-language canine names like Fido or Rover.
Students, USSR, 1930s
After
serving in the U.S. Navy, Yosif followed in his father's footsteps and
became a teacher, had a family, and ran a barbershop as well.
As
for his name, Yosif says: "Nobody called me Stalin. In fact, a lot of
people don't know, even right now, don't know nothing about Stalin. It
didn't matter. It's just a name."
He seemed unclear precisely why
the Uzbek doctors added Kim to his birth certificate as well. The name,
in fact, is a Russian acronym for the Young Communist International, the
youth branch of the Communist International. It was among the
newfangled names that became popular during Soviet times, many of which
were based on Bolshevik leaders and buzz phrases.
Less clear are
the origins of the name of his town in Virginia. According to Khanga,
the elder Roane's hometown nearly prevented him from renewing his
American papers at the newly opened U.S. Embassy in Moscow after the
establishment of U.S.-Soviet diplomatic ties in 1933.
She writes
that a low-level U.S. diplomat initially refused to believe that he
hailed from a town called Kremlin and grudgingly signed off on the
paperwork after cables with Washington confirmed his story.
An
authoritative history of the county in which Kremlin is located --
titled Westmoreland County, Virginia 1653-1983 -- sheds little light.
"Besides being the citadel of Russian government, Kremlin is a suburb of
Paris," the book notes. "How the name came to be applied to a place in
Westmoreland is unknown."
Below is the trailer for Yelena Demikovsky's film Black Russians: The Red Experience.[ If this clip does not appear on your device, please go directly to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqrQuUbaZPY ]
Early on a summer morning, customers begin to filter onto the shaded
patio in front of Fat Cat Karakol. By noon, the sun will hang high
overhead in the surrounding Tien Shan Mountains, but it is still early —
and loud. The cafe faces a noisy street.
Zhamilia Sydygalieva scurries over to a patio table where two men in
World Wildlife Fund shirts sit down. She takes their orders: cheesecake
with berry compote. It is an unlikely breakfast in these parts, but so
is this cafe’s mission of "Coffee, Food and Giving Back"– the message
written across the awning.
Kyrgyzstan is progressive for Central Asia, but Sydygalieva pushes that notion somewhere new with her cafe, Fat Cat Karakol,
which opened last August in the town at the eastern edge of Lake
Issyk-Kul. Sydygalieva envisions the restaurant as a vehicle for
community activism and social responsibility.
"The idea of the cafe is not just to serve tourists or work as a
business, but to be a business model," Sydygalieva said. "We are trying
to introduce social responsibility to Karakol, so that other local
businesses can do some social activities and social work."
In Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, new forms of businesses are starting to blossom – cafes and craft breweries
are opening and grocery stores are offering better-quality produce and
food. Karakol, by contrast, has lagged behind. Sydygalieva sees it as
her job to bring an end to this neglect, to show her community and the
surrounding villages that they are not overlooked or forgotten.
The remarkable Zhamilia Sydygaliev, the driving force behind Fat Cat
"I wanted to remind people what is more important, that compassion and
caring for the others without knowing them is what’s important, to be
able to give a hand in need and share is what’s important," said
Sydygalieva. "After all, kindness and the good deeds is what’s left
after us, these are the things that are of value."
The customers who visit Fat Cat are a mix of locals, backpackers and
tourists, along with a healthy dose of Peace Corps volunteers, she said,
adding that word is getting out.
The menu is rich in items that are not easy finds in Kyrgyzstan: chili
con carne, banana bread, grilled cheese, french toast (which, she said,
is a popular item people order all day long). The bedrock of her
business is coffee, although the beverage has traditionally not been
popular among locals, she says. But she has noticed that tastes are
starting to change.
"Apart from the tourists and the expats, a lot of the locals are
beginning to enjoy [the coffee], too," she said. "I like watching how
the culture of coffee drinking is slowly adapting in Karakol."
Between taking orders from customers and preparing coffees, Sydygalieva
runs back to the kitchen, where she teaches her only employee how to
make a pizza. It is a space just big enough for the two of them. They
work back to back, so close that not even a sheet of paper could slide
between them. The young woman rolls out the dough while Sydygalieva
grates the cheese and cuts up some vegetables. She is a victim of
domestic violence, a problem so widespread it was part of what inspired
Sydygalieva to open the cafe.
"I have grown up in an abusive family, and the domestic abuse is
considered as a norm," Sydygalieva said. Her father was emotionally and
physically violent. He abandoned her and her mother when Sydygalieva was
19, presenting a chance for the mother-daughter pair to rebuild their
lives.
Far Cat dishes: hummus, baba ganoush, and warm lavash.jpg
Sydygalieva went on to study at the American University in Central Asia
in Bishkek before completing her masters in Germany. Her mother found
her calling by opening Arjun Karakol, one of only two shelters in the
Karakol region for domestic violence victims, they say.
Though
Sydygalieva could have carved out a path for herself in one of Europe’s
strongest economies, she instead decided to return to Karakol to work
with her mother’s shelter.
She loved Germany, but it was not her motherland, she said. Still, her experience was an eye-opener.
"In Germany, social responsibility is a norm. [Here], the value of
helping others and compassion is low, and I wanted to change this," she
said.
Since opening its doors almost a year ago, Fat Cat has started several
charitable causes, including teaching baking skills to women from her
mother’s shelter, and organizing a school supply drive for the
underprivileged families in the villages.
To do so, Sydygalieva sells additional items that she displays on the
counter: apple pies, tres leches cakes, red velvet cupcakes – treats
that introduce new flavors and ingredients to the local community,
making them as radical as the cafe. Hanging on the wall behind the
counter are coffee mugs with spunk and character – decorated with
sayings like "Screw It, Pour Me Another Cup." All of the proceeds from
these sales go toward the cafe’s social projects.
It is more than local culture and taste buds that have been a challenge
for Sydygalieva. The area’s harsh winter tends to hurt her cash flow.
Despite the hassles, Sydygalieva persisted.
"Some days I feel like a Jehovah’s Witness trying to talk about … how
not only I but they can help serve the community and encourage others," Sydygalieva said. "But as time goes by, there are more people who know
about Fat Cat, know about the concept and the goals of this place, and
we have more locals who are willing to help even, with the smallest
amount."
Fat Cat's maple latte and pumpkin soup
Not long after the cafe opened, Sydygalieva received a call from a local
official. "He asked me, ‘I want to help, but I don’t know how,’" she
said. Sydygalieva offered him the contact information of those who need
assistance most.
Businesses, too, have caught a case of Sydygalieva’s community spirit.
Around the New Year, Sydygalieva partnered with three local hostels, a
beauty salon and a local taxi company.
Together, the companies raised
money to bring gifts and holiday cheer to special needs and orphan
children, food baskets for low-income and single-mother families, and
toiletries for psycho-neurological women’s center in nearby village.
In addition to selling charity cookies, the proceeds of which went to
the fundraising, Sydygalieva tried a different platform: she went on the
radio.
Scroll through Fat Cat Karakol’s Facebook page, and you will see posts
about the good deeds to be done in the community, organized meet-ups for
locals, or celebrations of events like Kindness Week or International
Women’s Day.
The charity bake sales are ongoing, and other recent
fundraising included a Kickstarter campaign for a young girl battling
spinal muscular atrophy in need of special equipment that the local
children’s rehabilitation center, named Ornok, could not afford or
provide for her treatment.
"This is a grassroots fundraising. It’s slow moving, it’s frustrating at
times, but we are progressively increasing awareness of the
underprivileged in the community and how we can help them," Sydygalieva
said. "The mission of Fat Cat was not only doing good in the community
but encouraging others to do the same."
Watch this 2-minute clip, in English, about Sydygalieva's inspiring venture. [ If this does not appear on your device, go directly to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o7ek6pZ9M8 ]
Meet the incredibly talented and innovative Uzbek textile designer and artist Dilyara Kaipova.
After graduating from the design faculty of Tashkent's Republican Art School named after Pavel Benkov, Kaipova worked as a designer at the Muqimiy Musical Theatre in Tashkent.
That was followed by a stint as master of hand puppets at the Uzbekistan State Institute of Arts and Culture.
However, since childhood she has been fascinated by needlework, knitting and embroidery. As these practices seeped into contemporary art, much of the focus of her creative activity shifted from painting (usually in soft pastels) to textiles.
Her first textile project "Captain Ikat" explored how traditional arts - in this case ikat fabric - can absorb and be devalued by symbols and cliches of mass culture.
The artist Dilyara Kaipova
Yet the paradox is that these same cliches can also invigorate and transform national traditions. The fabric, even when woven with designs of Mickey Mouse or Batman, magically still came alive.
As Kaipova commented:"I think it's a big mistake to try to "fossilize" traditions, as it's
impossible to change the course of history, they evolve independently of
us, of our influence."
She also noted that since
childhood she had wanted to understand what "embroidery and ikat
ornamentation symbolised and, simultaneously, I wanted to interfere with
it, to change it".
Working with masters in the ikat weaving centre of Margilan, in eastern Uzbekistan over five months, Kaipova produced classical, hand-woven adras fabrics (silk and cotton mix) infused with Mickey Mouse, The Scream, Batman and Darth Vader. Fabric was also produced with a Stars and Stripes motif.
Kaipova laughed, with respect, that although those masters thought she was totally crazy, they worked enthusiastically with her, creating these magical works.
The "Captain Ikat" exhibition was held in Tashkent in October 2016.
Reactions were varied - from enthusiastic delight through bewilderment and shock.
For Kaipova it was the realization of her "childhood desire" and she
described the happiness she experienced through the project.
O Boy! It's a Mickey Mouse ikat coat designed and stitched by Tashkent textile artist Dilyara Kaipova
Edvard Munch's The Scream woven into ikat fabric.
A Darth Vader traditional Uzbek chapan (coat), designed by Dilyara Kaipova
In April 2017 Kaipova participated in a contemporary art exhibition/competition in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Her works included some of these ikat fabrics as well as photographs, another artistic direction she pursues with passion. She won first prize.
Now she is preparing for a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Uzbekistan in November. The exhibition's theme is not yet determined.
Dilyara Kaipova - portrait as Mickey
Kaipova feels that, although ikat is always in her heart, for the moment she has exhausted this theme of globalization, consumerism and tradition. However, Uzbek traditional textiles present inexhaustible ideas for her work.
Collaboration is at the heart of Kaipova's practice and she now would like to work with fashion and interior designers.
This is how the BBC wrote of her paintings in an interview: "her favorite art medium
is soft pastels. Dilyara’s subjects come straight from her imagination,
and her subject matter can be simultaneously hilarious and scary. Her imagery of invented characters that look like "freaks" or little
monsters is the artist’s chosen motifs to comment on the hopeless and
ridiculous aspects of human existence. She fills her world with "puppet
Lolitas’" where their expressions conceal and reveal purity and decay,
cuteness and ugliness".
Dilyara Kaipova's work is available for purchase and she works on special commissions. Please see below for more images of this multi-talented artist.
If you are lucky enough to be in Tashkent this month, please do not miss this exhibition.
Graphic artist and illustrator Yulia Drobova's new exhibition opens at Tashkent's Alliance Française on 7 September and runs until 18 September.
As well as her charming graphic works, the exhibition will include unique mosaic pieces, a medium in which Yulia has recently begun working.
Her first glass mosaic pieces were a series of chickens, created to celebrate the Year of the Rooster.
Yulia found the medium exciting and challenging to work with. She documented the process in an interesting post on her website. This exhibition includes many pieces from her new series.
Yulia works in diverse spheres: book illustration, advertising videos, theatrical poster designs, textiles and stencils. For a deeper understanding of how she works, please review an earlier post Yulia Drobova's End of Winter Exhibition.
The Alliance Française is located at 112 Zulfiyaxonim Street, Tashkent. Opening hours are Tuesday - Friday 14:00 - 19:00 and Saturday 14:00 - 18:00. Closed Sundays and Mondays. Call ahead to get directions: + 998 71 2449408/+ 998 71 2449409
The exhibition opening is at 6:30 p.m. Thursday 7 September. Free entry. Works are for sale.
Enjoy a sample of images of her work below. If you miss the exhibition, you can order pieces directly by contacting Yulia via her website. You can also follow her work on Instagram.
I
think she is one of the most talented artists working in Tashkent today
- I am also the delighted owner of several whimsical pieces.
