The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Kurchatov in north-west Kazakhstan was once the most restricted location in the former Soviet Union, once known only by its postcode. Later, taking its name from Igor Kurchatov, the nuclear physicist who led the Soviet atomic bomb project, the town and its adjoining Semipalatinsk Test Site remained the centre of Soviet nuclear operations from 1949 to 1991. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the site ceased operations. Environmental degradation and long- term health consequences for residents were the site’s legacies — the result of hundreds of above- and below-ground detonations. Almagul Menlibayeva’s Kurchatov 22 2012 reconsiders the history and consequences of this period of experimental research by creating a seam between the past and present, between history real and imagined. The five-channel video installation moves between the documentary testimonies of residents and survivors of the Semipalatinsk ‘polygon’ and dramatised scenes of women performing strange gestures in the detritus and landscapes of Kurchatov. Like many regions in present-day Central Asia, the ground bears a terrible imprint of occupation — in this instance, from nuclear and radiological activities that have caused genetic defects and illnesses in those generations living and working in the contaminated steppes. Kurchatov 22 harnesses links between the collective memories and identities of its inhabitants, and connects the idea of environmental and industrial degradation with the construction of a post-Soviet Kazakh subjectivity. It reveals what curator Charles Merewether has noted in Menlibayeva’s practice as ‘an architecture of oppression, haunted by figures who belong to the land and to the imaginary of Kazakh life’. 1 Kurchatov 22 positions memory foremost as ‘a collective living organism’, with Menlibayeva adding further that her intention was to present memory as: . . . the egregore of a community and cultural society, and its deep psychological impact on the formation of the political and social developments in the post-Soviet era and its physical space. 2 Here, the concept of egregore refers to an autonomous collective consciousness derived from the gathering of people with shared purposes — what Menlibayeva suggests is ‘the nature of a shared cultural psychic experience, which manifests itself as a specific thought-form among people(s) of the ancient, arid and dusty steppes’. 3 Women form the backbone of this collective consciousness: a mother and grandmother remember the traumatic experience of hearing blasts and caring for disabled and sick children, while a group of women (including the artist herself) gather to inhabit the landscape, attempting to reconfigure these memories through allegorical gesture. In these scenes — set to a soundtrack using the customary bleeps and swirls reminiscent of science fiction soundtracks — there is an evocation of dreamlike states and the act of surveillance. As the women move through space, their identities are cloaked by images representative of the nuclear age — signifiers that highlight the way histories are often abstracted and reduced to images alone. Menlibayeva reminds us that there are always bodies underneath, lives that exist irrespective of acknowledgment. The women are also seen gently rolling tabletops through the barren terrain; these surfaces feature reproductions of images of the nuclear explosions and the officials who presided over testing. It is a simple gesture that reinserts the mushroom clouds back into the landscape; what now might be invisible to the eye has left a deadly physical trace that the ground will remember forever. Through her videos and photographs, Menlibayeva has explored the idea of developing a new contemporary mythology for Central Asia, one that engages with what she has termed ‘Romantic Punk Shamanism’ to reflect a rebellious celebration of nature and the spiritual aspects of Kazakhstan’s nomadic heritage and shamanistic, pre-Islamic religious traditions. Within this mythology, female sexuality is positioned at the forefront of lived experience, often with complex and humorous connotations — a point made explicit in Kurchatov 22 when a woman straddles a pyramid monument marking the centre of the Eurasian continent at the entrance to her body. Curator Valeria Ibrayeva has noted that one of the recurring themes of contemporary art from Central Asia is a ‘reflection on the nature of aggressiveness and submissiveness — qualities that may be seen either as a continuation of history or as a reflection of current reality’. 4 Almagul Menlibayeva’s work exists within this continuum — between allegorical expressions of trauma recalled in the present and in opposition to an assertive cultural context in which Kazakhstan continues to seek power and prestige from its ready access to the world’s second largest uranium reserve. José Da Silva 1 Charles Merewether, Almagul Menlibayeva 2009–2011 [exhibition catalogue], Priska C Juschka Fine Art, New York, 2011, unpaginated. 2 Almagul Menlibayeva, email to the author, 5 July 2012. 3 Almagul Menlibayeva, cited in ‘Almagul Menlibayeva’, European Photography , no.89, summer 2011, p.42. 4 Valeria Ibrayeva, ‘The Tamerlane syndrome’, in The Tamerlane Syndrome: Art and Conflict in Central Asia , Skira, Milan, Italy, 2005, p.15. ALMAGUL MENLIBAYEVA The ground that recalls 242