Nomads and Networks: The Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan exhibition opened in New York
Opening the event with a reception on March 6, Kazakhstan's Ambassador to the United States, Erlan Idrissov shared his delight over the success of two years of joint work with New York University. "Because of this cooperation, we can offer to our American friends the beauty, elegance and sophistication of the work done by my Kazakh ancestors who made such a great, yet unsung contribution to the development of civilization," the News Bulletin of the kazakh Embassy to the US reads.
Idrissov added in his welcoming remarks that Kazakhstan looked forward to an ever more prosperous and vibrant future, as it celebrates the 20th anniversary of the independence. "At the same time, we embrace a renewed appreciation of our long and distinguished history and the ways in which that history informs who we are today," he said.
He also highlighted the importance of knowing the past in order to prepare for the future. "Kazakhstan's past, which counts thousands of years, is, of course, very visible in the stunning Iron Age artifacts presented in the exhibition," Idrissov said . The exhibition serves as a powerful tool for intercultural understanding -- something that he believes today's world needs very much.
According to ISAW Exhibitions Director and Chief Curator Jennifer Chi, "Each of the great diversity of objects in the exhibition sheds light on the lives and beliefs of the nomadic people of the Altai and Tianshan Mountains of the Iron Age. The curatorial team has designed the exhibition to tell a vivid and illuminating story of nomadic life, its distinct patterns of movement and the ways in which artifacts the reflect this."
Nomads and Networks: The Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan focuses on the people of the Altai and Tianshan Mountain regions, located in the eastern part of the country, from roughly the eighth to first centuries BCE. Featuring nearly 250 artifacts, the exhibition dispels the notion that nomadic societies were less developed than sedentary ones. Rather, they are revealed to have been highly sophisticated, with strategic migratory routes, active networks of communication and cultural exchange with their neighbors. The exhibition remains on view and open to the public through June 3, 2012.
The artifacts on display in Nomads and Networks are all on loan from Kazakhstan's four national museums, and most of them are on view in this country for the first time. Artifacts range from bronze openwork stands, superbly decorated with animal and human figures; to "petroglyphs" or rudimentary drawings, which marked important places in the landscape; to dazzling gold adornments that signified the social status of those who wore them. One highlight is the recently excavated, but never-displayed material from a fourth-third century upper-class burial-site in Berel, near the Russian/Chinese border, where permafrost conditions enabled the preservation of organic materials. The exhibition contains some 120 artifacts from this rich site.
Background
For at least three millennia, nomadic societies -- with their periodic movements along carefully determined migratory routes -- helped to shape the cultural landscape of the Eurasian steppe. In southern and eastern Kazakhstan, including the Altai and Tianshan regions, these routes frequently combined warmer, lowland pastures which were used in the winter, and alpine highlands which were occupied in the summer, forming a sustainable system of land-use for the animals on which the nomads relied for food, wool, and hides. In the summer, nomads formed themselves into small herding groups, sometimes comprising only a single family. In late autumn and winter, herding groups combined to form larger camps that revived larger communal identities. With larger groups came armed conflict, where horse-riding warfare practiced by the groups' elites played a central role. This did not fully develop until the Iron Age, at which point it spread across the Eurasian steppe, yielding the magnificent material culture on display in the exhibition.
Exhibition Overview
Nomads and Networks begins with a display of spectacular, superbly preserved finds from Berel, an elite burial site of the Pazyryk culture located near the border with Russia, Mongolia, and China. Each burial at the site contained at least one horse, and sometimes many more, and the exhibition illuminates the central role of the animal in Pazyryk culture. With a focus on recently excavated artifacts, this portion of the exhibition includes numerous items devoted to the elaborate ornamentation of the horse, a deliberately transformative practice that surely had ritual purposes. On display are expertly carved appliqués in wood-once overlaid in gold and tin-that belonged to a set of horse tack; two superb sets of wooden horns that, together with several wooden appliqués, are installed to demonstrate the complete decoration of a horse; a bridle ornamented with plaques that have been carved with real or mythical animals and floral elements; a saddle with superbly embroidered and appliquéd felt, and much more.
Other artifacts illuminate Pazyryk burial customs, such as a wooden pillow that was used to support the head of the deceased, and carved boar's-tusk elements that may have functioned as a necklace.
The second section of the exhibition opens with a representative selection of petroglyphs, or images carved on rock-face. A strong indicator of the nomads' deep connection to the natural world, such carvings once embellished the nomadic landscape, most likely demarcating sacred places. The examples on view depict a variety of themes, from animals the nomads would have encountered, to scenes of chariots drawn by horses, perhaps referring to mythical or cosmic beliefs. Other items, such as a plaque in the form of a fish and belt ornaments representing boars, demonstrate the integral role of land and water animals to nomadic life and belief systems.
While their role in nomadic society is not fully understood, massive bronze cauldrons like the examples in the exhibition may have been used in ritual communal meals held in the winter encampments. However, the meaning of the exhibition's five elaborately decorated bronze stands is more enigmatic, as their decoration is highly varied in style and content. They were found at scattered spots across the landscape, perhaps suggesting that they, too, were placed at sacred locations.
It was through exchange and interactions with their sedentary neighbors that the nomads of the Tianshan and Altai were able to acquire valuable luxury goods. These not only served as status symbols that distinguished powerful individuals from others in the community, but also influenced the style and construction of objects produced by the nomads themselves. Nomads and Networks includes several examples of this cultural and aesthetic interaction, with two particularly spectacular examples: the Zhalauli treasure and the Kargaly diadem.
The Zhalauli treasure is comprised of thirteen gold objects of personal adornment. While the function of some of the pieces is not known, the eight teardrop-shaped ornaments in the exhibition clearly decorated a belt, and their overall composition and decoration fuse indigenous and foreign-perhaps Western-tastes. The Kargaly diadem, a superb openwork piece with figural and landscape imagery articulated through the inlay of precious stones, shows a similar mixing of form and content. But here, the imagery is drawn directly from Chinese celestial iconography. The diadem also indicates that some of the adornment worn by the nomadic elite must have been striking in its radiance.
