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| Bactria Cultural Centre, as a contemporary artistic space, serves as a catalyst by providing opportunities to local artists to express their creativity in an entirely free and experimental way. At present it is the only venue in Dushanbe that encourages artists to apply innovative approaches to manifest their artistic visions. |
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| Bactria Cultural Centre, as the cultural actor of ACTED’s activities, is fully devoted to provide access to information and to vocational training. Educational activities aimed at artists and art professionals are organized with the firm belief that an understanding of national identity as well as social changes and development can originate from active participants of society. The role of an artist is, and always has been, the observer, the analyzer, and the initiator. |
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| One of the main information points in Bactria is its library, which has a collection of books in Tajik, Russian, English, German and French, focusing on mostly culture and history. Art books on the works of Michelangelo, Levitan, Vrubel, Aivazovsky, Theophanes the Greek, movies of Russian and Western avant-garde, and Italian Renaissance are the most valued pieces of the collection. |
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"Original Copy": flying artists - November 2008
An artist of contemporary arts is first of all someone, who experiments with artistic visualization of certain important ideas.
The exhibition “Original Copy” is attempt of professional artists and art students to take a fresh look at European arts. Through understanding and extending knowledge on other cultures, tolerance can be developed. It is also an opportunity to bring closer to one’s perspective something that was once understood in the frameworks of classical interpretation.
The artistic projects transform European masterpieces and make them more relevant to our contemporary world. Masterpieces are always about something “principle”, but what is “principle” cannot have limits and always remains relevant, no matter how it is presented. These artworks have become texts, in which reinterpretation can take place. In the interpretation it is important to find a “happy medium” to keep the correct relation to the artworks, while creating something new in the process of analysis. The new understanding of the pieces is not controversial to their original meaning; it is a highlight and play of those elements which are relevant to our times. Interestingly enough this process brings us closer to the understanding of those previously fenced off museum images of European arts.
Artists of the exhibition project “Original Copy” have chosen various ways to interpret masterpieces - recreation of Piet Mondrian’s work in the traditional technique of patchwork (‘kurok’). There is a certain mystery behind the visual coincidence of European neoplasticism and Eastern quilt. The trees with red trunks in the picture of Felix Vallotton calling for close examination to find reasons for using such a dramatic colour prompts an artist to add an object to the picture imitating the roots of the trees, also of red colour. In interpretations like these, certain collisions and various semantic commentaries can occur.
Another approach is not to create a copy of European masterpieces but to use already applied artistic methods that were used by famous artists. For example, French artist Sophie Cale in her photo project “The Blind” researches the dreams and desires of people who are blind since birth. It is possible for example, to repeat this experiment to learn about and realize the dreams of those who cannot hear since birth.
Indeed, thanks to new communication technologies, borders between people from different cultures become transparent and permeable so much, that today we can say that expressions of European culture are clearly visible around us. We meet them in various points of our daily lives, but in this exhibition they manifested themselves in certain objects referring us to famous masterpieces. In the air, almost invisibly, one can see angels from the Renaissance paintings; and the lovers of Marc Chagall are flying over the mountains of the Pamirs. And together with them the artists of the exhibition “Original Copy”.
(Dana Safarova)
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Exhibition: “Search for Space” – February 2008
Exhibition: “Art of Feminine Gender” – March 2008
Exhibition: “April Thesis” – April 2008
Exhibition: “Shade” - collaborative work between Martha Jackson-Jarvis and local artists and art students – June 2008
Exhibition: "Pre-Islamic Heritage of Tajikistan.
Non-museum Interpretation" - September 2008
Photo exhibition: "Light and Shadow" - October 2008
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| Bactria Cultural Centre is engaged in projects that further capacity building and development of music industry in Tajikistan. First of all, it offers a venue to musicians through the organization of regular concerts where they can freely practice their creativity. We impose no limitation in the direction of musical genres, but we do promote world music and experiments based on the combination of traditional and contemporary music. |
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| If the context allows, Bactria Cultural Centre uner the auspices of ACTED, carries out heritage conservation and rehabilitation activities, if the heritage in question has been damaged or suffers from a lack of maintenance due to the difficulties facing the communities. |
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As a result of the continuous degradation of Tajik educational structure, from a unified primary and secondary education under the Soviets, barely 60 percent of Tajikistan’s current school-age population is receiving educational opportunities. Through opportunities for learning and vocational training BACTRIA aims at democratizing access to information and education. |
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Artistic Vision 
