From evolution to growth: Central Asian video art, 1995–2015

Abstract

This article analyses the development of video art in Central Asia. It explores both individual artists in the context of personal, national and international agendas, and institutional issues that video art faces in the region. Video art emerged in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) in the mid-1990s, when the Soviet former republics gained independence and became national states. The evolution of video art reflects the cultural development in the region and its embeddedness within various global socio-cultural processes. In the last 20 years, each of the Central Asian republics has become home to vibrant communities of artists, who use the video medium as a universally comprehensible, international language to convey their ideas and their cultures. Today contemporary artists are successful in offering their personal artistic strategies and representing their countries at leading international exhibitions and film festivals. However, although some artists have achieved considerable international recognition, video art as a cultural phenomenon still faces serious institutional problems, which become transparent in a temporal perspective. Nevertheless, Central Asian video art continues to develop in the convergent global current of artistic practices of new cinema and contemporary art.