“The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.” In 1911, the Polish-American labour union leader Rose Schneiderman made this rallying cry for a woman’s right to enjoy a dignified life beyond basic sustenance. The term “bread and roses” has since found its way into our political consciousness as we engage with questions of gender and economic disparities more profoundly than ever before. It is also the title of a new exhibition in Berlin that examines art by four generations of Kazakh women from the Soviet era to the present. Hosted at Momentum, a non-profit gallery space, Bread and Roses pushes female Kazakh art produced anonymously or under male pseudonyms to the forefront of public consideration.
To really understand the activist role played by ethnic Kazakh female artists today in promoting their unique traditions through their work, we must explore the legacy left behind by the women pioneers of Kazakh modern art, including Vera Ermolaeva (1893–1937), Aisha Galimbaeva (1917–2008) and Gulfairus Ismailova (1929–2013). These three artists are integral to the conceptual framework of Bread and Roses. Ermolaeva, widely considered as a “great-grandmother” of Kazakh art, came to a tragic end when her illustrations were declared “anti-Soviet” and she was sent to a gulag and murdered. Fortunately both Galimbaeva and Ismailova evaded this fate, finding success in theatre and film, rather than fine art. There was good reason for this: women in the early 20th century who were interested in a career in the visual arts were frequently held back by expectations that it was a serious domain solely within the purview of male authority.
Excluded from the Artists’ Union, which was run mostly by men, both women initially worked as theatre designers. They became well known at a time when MosFilm, one of the most historically important Russian film studios responsible for the production of films by Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, relocated to Almaty — Kazakhstan’s largest city — during the Second World War. Through her paintings, set designs and the roles she played in films such as The Daughter of the Steppes (1954), Galimbaeva dedicated her practice to documenting issues surrounding women’s domestic labour and their changing roles in Kazakh society, quietly eschewing the state-approved style of depicting women weaving traditional textiles, or participating in other communal work that was excluded from the norms of Soviet industrial collectivism. Likewise, Ismailova’s paintings of the Kazakh steppes were a constant reminder of the nomadic lifestyle that was rapidly being wiped out under Soviet rule. As well as a painter and theatre designer, Ismailova made a name for herself as an actress in films like Kyz-Zhibek (1972) based on folk legend.
Alongside these pioneering artists, Bread and Roses also includes work by a number of contemporary Kazakh artists such as Anar Aubakir, Gulnur Mukazhanova, Gulmaral Tatibayeva, Bakhit Bubikanova, Saule Sulemeinova and Lidia Blinova. In addition, Aubakir, Sulemeinova and Tatibayeva were selected to partake in a 2-month residency programme at Momentum with four other Kazakh artists to work with migrants and refugees in the city, producing art using media outside their usual practice. “The fine arts education in Kazakhstan does not extend to the contemporary,” comments Rits-Volloch, the founding director of Momentum. “This is exactly why we developed this residency program with workshops, masterclasses, and meetings with other artists, in order to give them a chance to expand beyond their formal education and mingle with new cultures and influences. They are all in Berlin for the first time, seeing this city with fresh eyes.” It’s not hard to see why Berlin might provide fertile ground for creative inspiration for these artists: as a mosaic of disparate cultures, it bears resemblance to the current Kazakh population, made up of different ethnic groups forcibly relocated from other areas within the Soviet Union.
The display of ideas from these women is eclectic. Tatibayeva, who is known for her collages and tapestries, created a yurt installation woven from the clothes of Kazakh women by using the items worn by female migrants arriving in Germany. She describes her work as “project management”, and hopes that the residency programme will allow her to continue manifesting her ideas about the power of the female nomad’s spirit. Aubakir, who ordinarily works in a realist style and won the Best Painting Award at the Russian Art Week competition in 2010, expressed her interest in combining the instrumental music of native Kazakh people with her own musical improvisations to create an emotional and psychological image of Berlin. Another young artist, Aigerim Ospanova, explains that work involves food to address “the issue of cultural integration and communication”, which has resonated with her during the residency.
Suleimenova, who creates collages using waste material made from polyethylene film and plastic bags, reasons that her practice urges people to remember the distressing events of Kazakhstan’s recent past. “Art is perceived to be mostly decorative – we use it to create a fairy tale or a myth. But I believe that plastic bags, which are something we encounter in our daily lives, can be used as part of art in order to tell the truth. People prefer to forget the traumatic things that have happened to them, as if they were covered in film, or a wrapper of sorts.” Her work in Bread and Roses features two old archive photos, including those of a famine in Kazakhstan between 1932 to 1933. The first depicts emaciated people walking along a road, while the other shows children sitting together in a row. These images are of deep personal meaning to her, as she explains, “In my family, my grandfather’s brother went to China to escape starvation”. With the world quick to laud Kazakhstan’s rising status as the economic powerhouse of Central Asia, Suleimenova’s work interrogates the damning human cost of this growth, and chides us for so quickly forgetting.
If this exhibition and residency programme are anything to go by, we can expect to see Kazazh women’s art afforded a greater visibility. Our appreciation of art can only increase when we choose to broaden our horizons, and Bread and Roses is a step in the right direction.
“Bread and Roses” runs through to 20 October at Momentum, at the Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin.
All images courtesy of Momentum.