February 6 Tuesday, 4:30pm | Oakley Center
“Eluding Capture: Portrait-Reflections on Central Asia and Contemporary Art”
Eluding Capture: Three Artists from Central Asia (opening February 3 at MASS MoCA) features the work that explores the conditions of belonging in Central Asia through photography, textile, film, and video. Typically defined as modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, Central Asia has been ruled by Indigenous Khanates, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union at different points in time. The region’s rich philosophical, literary, and artistic traditions provide the basis for contemporary interventions that attend to its history and speculate on its future. Together, the artists featured in Eluding Capture interrogate what it means to dwell in and on the region.
In her commissioned work for the exhibit, Berlin-based Kazakh textile artist Gulnur Mukazhanova created a series of 75 felted textiles, titled Portrait-Reflections (on the history of my homeland, Qandy Qantar 2022.) The felted portraits take the January 2022 protests in Kazakhstan as a starting point for her interrogation of the role of the individual in contemporary systems of state violence.
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