"From the Red Star to the Blue Dome"

The ifa gallery Berlin is currently showing an exhibition that traces transformations in Central Asian art and architecture. The exhibition displays the recent trend toward recovering Islamic traditions in the region. By Christina M. White

Since gaining independence after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan have struggled to reinvent their identity, in part by returning to their Islamic roots that were largely repressed under the official atheism of the Soviet era.

The Islam that is resurfacing in the art and architecture of the region surprisingly bears the unique traces of the multicultural blend that underlies these newly founded republics. Each nation in fact houses a microcosm of the wider region, with representatives of not only many different nationalities and ethnicities, but also many religions.

In this area between Russia, China and the Middle East, Islam has lived side by side with the Eastern Orthodox church, shamanism, Sufism and Buddhism. The art and architecture emerging from a new generation of artists reflect these various traditions, exposing the tensions between them as well as the ways in which these traditions have grown up entwined around each other.

Promoting an understanding of Islam in Europe

The exhibition "Vom roten Stern zur blauen Kuppel" in Berlin is the latest in a series created by the ifa gallery in Berlin entitled "Islamic Worlds," in which the ifa (the Institute for Foreign Affairs) further pursues its goal of promoting an understanding of Islam in Europe. For this collection, as with others, the ifa has provided fellowships for the artists to bring their work to Berlin.

The series "Islamic Worlds" goes a long way toward showing the diversity of Islam around the world. Here we are offered a glimpse at the particular way in which cultural traditions in Central Asia have been shaped by the history of the region. Some of the most striking art represented at this exhibition has, in fact, less to do with Islam directly than with the ironic juxtaposition of different traditions.

The best example of this is perhaps the sketches made by Soviet architect Nikolai Sharskij, who was assigned with creating appropriate ornamentation for some 200 concrete slab apartment buildings in the Uzbekistan capitol Tashkent in the 1970s. He used local Islamic patterns, sometimes combining them with obligatory Soviet icons representing military and industrial themes.

Soviet and Islamic iconography

Erbol Meldibekov's series of traditional ceramic plates modeled on those sold in souvenir shops in his native Kazakhstan breaks the clichés of local art by incorporating bizarre elements of Soviet and/or more recent historical developments.

One plate shows an elderly couple whose turban and burka are patterned with the American stars and stripes, a reference to Uzbekistan's decision to allow American troops to be based there during their invasion of Iraq last year.

Yet there is still a place here for luxurious Oriental images, for example in Almagul Menlibaeva's photography series entitled "Steppe Baroque." These works feature the radiant colors of the steppe landscape, which are matched by the Oriental scarves that barely cover the naked women posed there.

This series is one that may seem to have the least to do with Islam, though ultimately Menlibaeva's reference to shamanistic rituals to give expression to women's emancipation must also be seen as a commentary on the re-Islamization of the region.

Colorful nomadic lives of the artists

Perhaps the most fascinating element that this exhibition brings to light is the colorful nomadic biographies of the artists themselves, which are also representative of the region. There are stories of one artist's family that found its way back to each other after decades of separation in Kaliningrad and Uzbekistan, or one artist couple whose parents found their way back to an Islamic home in Kazakhstan after growing up under communism in the Soviet Republic and in China.

It is a shame, however, that the exhibition catalogue is so much more comprehensive than the exhibition itself. One only wishes that the ifa had a larger space and more means to exhibit the cultural bridges they are helping to build.