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ABSTRACT
This article explores contemporary artistic practices in Kazakhstan that challenge narratives on national belonging and identity through the notion of queerness. It discusses artworks created by artists Saule Dyussenbina, Natalya Dyu and Kuanish Bazargaliyev, the artistic duo Kreolex Center, and the advertising agency Havas Worldwide Kazakhstan, which were created as a reaction to global discussions around gender and sexuality happening in and between various countries. It seeks to scrutinize different approaches and aspects presented in each artwork and argues that the overall strategy present in all the artistic testimonies is humour. While drawing on key concepts and categorizations of humour that permit the uncovering of the ways in which humour creates specific knowledge and identity, this article looks at humour techniques more broadly and builds on the argumentation provided by Uroš Čvoro and Chrisoula Lionis that opt for humour analysis connected to temporality and its perception in the works of art.
Acknowledgements
I thank numerous colleagues from academic and activist circles for their feedback and support during private talks and the presentations of my research at several queer-feminist, art-historical, and gender studies conferences and talks throughout 2018–19. I thank Aliya de Tiesenhausen for giving me the idea of humour as a unifying strategy in the discussed artworks. I thank my professor Wendy Shaw for guiding me though the initial drafts of the article. I thank Katharina Wiedlack for supporting my studies intellectually and financially. I thank Adam Bobeck for proof-reading and language improvement. I thank my close friends and queer comrades for support and solidarity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 In this article I use the term queer as an umbrella term for non-heterosexual and gender-non-conforming individuals. I juxtapose queer to the LGBT acronym and see it as a more inclusive notion that goes beyond binarism, homonationalism and neo-liberalism. This article puts queer at the intersection with the national difference (for more, see Puar Citation2007; El-Tayeb Citation2011; Rjabova and Rjabov Citation2013). I also see queer as an ever-changing notion, which is never fixed. In other words, I see it as an anti-identity that allows for reading through the queer lens (Sedgwick Citation1997; Babka and Hochreiter Citation2008).
2 A modified Library of Congress system for transliteration is used in this paper. Diacritical marks have been omitted from the text so as not to distract readers. Some well-known names are rendered in their familiar transliterated form. For example, Dyu rather than Dju.
3 For the poster, see https://tengrinews.kz/story/reklamschiki-izobrazili-potseluy-kurmangazyi-i-pushkina-260689/.
4 The so-called ‘Bruderkuss’ was the socialist welcoming ritual of communists to show their solidarity through the kiss in order to signal their affiliation to the communist movement.
5 Daria Khamitzhanova gave the reasons behind her immigration in an interview with Radio Svoboda on 13 July 2015 (https://rus.azattyq.org/a/dariya-hamitzhanova-potselui-kurmangazy-pushkin/27123333.html).
6 Communication with the artists via Facebook, 10 September 2020.
7 See note 6.
8 For the artwork, see http://aspangallery.com/en/artists/meldibekov.
9 Gattamelata was the Renaissance condottiero Erasmo da Narni. Donatello’s equestrian statue is in the Piazza del Santo, Padua.
10 It was not the first work where Bazargaliyev used the LGBT flag. In a series of oil paintings titled When All Flags were Kazakh (2015–16), the artist inserted the most known Kazakh ornament кошкар мүйіз/koshkar muyiz (sheep horns) into flags of different countries, and the rainbow flag was among them. It is a continuation of his earlier series entitled When All People were Kazakh (2013). In this series, he created artworks from the imaginary future of the Kazakh Federation, the only country that survived the Great Flood. According to the legend, the artworks from the series were ‘commissioned by the state order and serve as a re-creation of the old masterpieces’ (Ershov Citation2013, 10). The depicted subjects on these ‘re-creations’ acquire Kazakh identities in their names and appearances. Thus, the king of Spain, Ferdinand VII, is depicted as аким/akim (the city mayor) of the A. city; Albrecht Dürer in his self-portrait of 1500 becomes Alibek Durov. Another example is of the Dutch family portrait of the sixteenth century painted as a family in a yurt, etc.
11 I deliberately call it the LGBT and not the ‘queer’ flag to underline the fact that the rainbow flag is problematic and not inclusive of all identities presented along the queer spectrum.
12 Of the Human Body (part of Intermedia 3), authors and performers Maria Vilkovisky and Ruth Jenrbekova, camera Dmitry Vilensky, Rosa’s House of Culture (The School for Engaged Art Chto Delat), St Petersburg, Russia, 28 April 2016 (https://youtu.be/8iYe054_Sqg).
13 Throughout the nineteenth century, this practice flourished in Central Asia and many Western travellers (e.g., Count K. K. Pahlen, Eugene Schuyler, Dr John Covel) reported on its popularity until the practice faded from Turkestan in the late 1920s due to Soviet influence. The topic was also popular among other Russian artists who worked in Turkestan, such as Vasily Vereshchagin (1842–1904) and Alexander Volkov (1886–1957).
14 For the artwork, see http://miamioh.edu/cas/_files/documents/havighurst/ilkhom%20/ilkhom-curriculum-guides.pdf.