Daring, Subversive, Transgressive: Strategies of Self-Representation in 20th-Century Central Asian Art

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel explores the artistic practices of 20th-century Central Asian artists through the lens of self-representation and the construction of subjectivities. Though exercised in different media and different periods, from the Soviet Cultural Revolution of the 1920s and 1930s through the perestroika era and the early independence, this variety of artworks and practices highlights a strong agency of its creators in forging their own identities and subjectivities. Georgy Mamedov discusses self-portraits by the early Soviet modernists of Central Asia as a particular type of self-representation strategy that embodies characteristics of an ego document and a political manifesto. Saltanat Shoshanova focuses on the late perestroika and early independence theater as a space for the subversion of gender and sexuality gender and sexuality, looking in particular at Vladislav Pazi’s 1992 adaptation of M. Butterfly in Frunze (Bishkek). Dilda Ramazan discusses the radical performance practices of the Kazakhstani artist and political activist Kanat Ibragimov as an example of what French writer of Algerian descent Louisa Yousfi theorized as barbarism.

The panel asks how Central Asian artists have negotiated their self-representation within the constraints of ideological, cultural, and national discourses. How do their artistic practices challenge dominant narratives and forge alternative subjectivities? In what ways do their works reflect or resist colonial legacies, Soviet modernist paradigms, and post-Soviet nation-building projects? By bringing together case studies from painting, theater, and performance art, this panel highlights how Central Asian artists have asserted their agency, redefined self-representation, and subverted cultural frameworks around gender, sexuality and national identity.

Sub Unit

• Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies

Chair

• Tatsiana Shchurko, U of South Florida

Papers

• Painting Subjects: Self-Portrait as an Egodocument in Early Soviet Central Asian Art - Georgy Mamedov, U of Melbourne (Australia)

• Performing the East: M. Butterfly and the Politics of Queer (In)Visibility in Central Asia - Saltanat Shoshanova, U of Regensburg (Germany)

• Barbarism as Resistance Strategy in the Early Post-Soviet Contemporary Art of Kazakhstan - Dilda Ramazan, Sorbonne U (France)

Discussant

• Tatsiana Shchurko, U of South Florida