Globalization, the Figure of the Artist, and the Bishkek School of Contemporary Art

• In Event: Bishkek beyond the Posts: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Contemporary City

Abstract

Kyrgyzstan's inclusion in the global art market may seem like an ancillary feature of new and old "globalizations," but, in fact, the speed and efficacy with which contemporary art reaches into the most "peripheral" places has made it a privileged discourse in the production of a sense of global synchrony—a logic crucial to liberal free-market globalization. Unpacking the tensions of this movement, this presentation will take up the Bishkek School of Contemporary Art (BishSI) as a case study in articulating the figure of the "global contemporary artist" in Bishkek. How does the figure of the contemporary artist—self-consciously worked out by BishSI and their former teachers—draw from, react to, challenge, and supersede inherited notions of the artist? This certainly includes a canonical Western art historical perspective, but also a state socialist, shamanistic, and Islamic figures of the artist. How do these notions not only differentially interact with an understanding of "contemporary art" as a hegemonic discourse, but also subvert, strengthen, obscure, or otherwise complicate other salient subject positions (the entrepreneur, the activist, the grantee)? I will ground my answers these questions through participant-observation with a couple key BishSI projects as well as close readings of their artistic and prosaic works.

Author

• Marcos Cisneros, UC Berkeley