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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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"Pre-Islamic Heritage of Tajikistan.
Non-museum
Interpretation" - September 2008
Permanent Exhibition in Behzod National Museum
The project “Contemporary art in the museum space” is the first attempt in Central Asia to include the exhibition of contemporary art in a museum space, which usually is notable for its academic and traditional approaches. In 2007- 2008 in Behzod National Museum, with the support of Restorers Without Borders, Tajikistan and Bactria Cultural Centre, the project “Pre-Islamic Heritage in Tajikistan” was implemented. Among others, a unique object of the collection, a carved wooden mehrab decorated with pre-Islamic symbols, was restored. It was namely this mehrab, the “Iskodar mehrab,” which gave the impetus for the continuation of the project with participation of contemporary artists, working in the field of different media – painting, sculpture, photo, video and installation.
The concept of pre-Islamic historical-cultural heritage of Tajiks is placed on the basis of a unified national idea of contemporary Tajikistan. This idea inspired large number of artists to create art works in many media and genre, commemorating the Arian past of Tajiks. Then, why do we need another project connected to this theme? What can contemporary artists add that is new, interesting and original to this discourse and why do artists who a priori are free of ideological dogmatism turn to this topic?
In this project we did not try to highlight governmental or ideological relevance, but were striving for a more life-like and value oriented approach, therefore artists who consider themselves contemporary and their art relevant, the subject of pre-Islamic heritage and its influence in our lives today must be of interest to them. The heritage of our pre-Islamic past finds its expression in our daily lives – in traditions, in contradictions and compromises within society – who we are, first of all; in the relationships to our neighbors and in our aspirations to view the world through the prism of past and not of the future or at least of the present.
How can something new, interesting and original find its space in this project? Is it possible at all, considering the flow of ideology oriented products? It is probably possible only if the artist finds the strength to overcome the barriers of praising hymns, exaggerated delight of “great past” and the heritage of ancestors and turns his attention not to the past but to the future. If he can overcome the wish to copy great masters or to create another museum object. If he can resist the desire to follow successful trends and consumers’ demands.
Our goal, within the museum space, is to look to the future while preserving the past and reflect our relationship to the present.
The unique feature of the exhibition is not only that the works of new media artists – photo, video, and computer graphic design – will be permanently exhibited, but also that the collection of the museum itself was the basic source for inspiration for the artists to create new art dedicated to the theme of pre-Islamic heritage, first of all its symbolism in Tajikistan’s culture. This way, the museum for a while became a laboratory of contemporary art, a place where artists gathered and discussed the possible works of art, talked to museum experts and tried to deepen their understanding about the historical objects.
The result of a more than a month of the artists’ work manifested itself in the exhibition “Pre-Islamic Heritage of Tajikistan. Non-museum Interpretation”. Both young and well-established artists participated in the project. From the very beginning organizers of the project did not limit the artists in their selection of media, which ended up being dominantly photo and video. It is necessary to mention that along with new works, award-winning pieces are also exhibited. The photo series of Jamshed Kholikov, “Signs of Zoroaster”, was created within the project STARTER that took place in 2006 and the video of Aleksey Rumyantsev “Kara-bolo” was shown at the Central Asian stand at the Venice Biennale in 2007.
Suleiman and Ozar Sharifi have contributed to the exhibition with a photo series “Breaks” and with a video “Signs”. In both works, artists having observed the urban environment they found on many objects, on the covers of manholes, on decorative bars, and on facades of buildings signs and symbols, which once were associated with the Soviet era. These once unambiguous signs having lost their original look with time, seem to acquire a new-old understanding.
Artist Inna Klado, within her clearly defined priorities in the direction of ecology, continued her work “Tagging of Trees”, an action, which manifested itself at the exhibition in a series of photos. The work calls attention to the constant deforestation in Tajikistan and of course in the whole world. The topic is especially timely with the approach of cold weather and with the shortage of electricity. The artist with gentle female care placed soft clay rings on the trees then marked them with various signs and symbols – protections in various cultures and eras. This time, trees at the summer retreat of the Art College in Varzob were tagged.
Faruh Negmatzade, one of the well-established Tajik artists on the art market, who has been concentrating lately on works of smaller format, surprised the organizers with a sizeable canvas “Existence”. While the size – two by four meters - might have been unusual for the artists, the theme he selected is as always deeply philosophical. The artist brought together various signs and figures from the ancient Iranian swastikas, the Jewish Star David to the circumference of squares and polygons, reflecting on the absolute of earthly existence, such as men and women, day and night, seasons, and the cardinal directions on a single canvas.
Jamshed Kholikov, besides the above mentioned photo series “Signs of Zoroaster” presented a new video work “Nafas” (Breathing), which is a continuation of one of his themes, the sufferings and fate of eastern women. In his video the artist turns to dance as decisive metaphor. A traditionally dressed woman is dancing to the melodies of eastern music with tied arms while trying to free her feelings and give power to the movements. Tajik dance has its roots in ancient Arian sacred rituals worshiping the force of nature and ancient gods. This type of dance carries the deep ideology of freedom and isolation from reality. Today’s dance does not carry underlying sacred base, but for many women dancing is still the only opportunity to free themselves from unsettling life and the ties of archaic traditions.
Georgy Mamedov – program director, curator of the exhibition
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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
Photo exhibition: "Light and Shadow" - October 2008
Exhibition: "Original Copy" - November 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 
