The Eurasian Utopia

Abstract

The primary objective of this article is to analyse the founder of the contemporary Kazakh art Rustam Khalfin's artistic practices as a precious legacy of local modernism. Although modernism belongs to a relatively recent past, it is already regarded as an important period in the history of culture, which has to be studied, understood and preserved. In the Soviet and post-Soviet period Kazakhstan found itself in an unusual socio-cultural situation, when universal modernisation started to percolate into the patriarchal way of life of the local population. Nomads have always been open-minded people ready to adopt new developments from other cultures and interpret them in their own way. Rustam Khalfin's practices are an example of remarkable reflection on such methods of conservation and actualisation of traditions in the rhizomatic mode, which does not suggest a rigid linear construction: ‘It is a model, which continues to perpetually construct itself and deepen, and a process, which never ceases to continue, get fragmented and resume.’ (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 2010). They exemplify a specific approach to the conservation of the local modernity, although it seems utopian compared to the European tradition of cultural heritage preservation.