Said Atabekov
Born 1965 in Bes-Terek, Uzbekistan. He lives and works in Shymkent, Kazakhstan.
Said Atabekov began his artistic activity in 1993 as a member of the Red Tractor Group; the first avant-garde art collective founded in Southern Kazakhstan after Perestroika. As a witness to successive waves of social and political change in an area which saw a transition from nomadic culture through Communism to Capitalism in less than a hundred years, Atabekov explores the intersections and local impact of often conflicting cultures, skilfully identifying and animating elements that reveal their deeper paradoxes.
Like many of today's artists, Atabekov's work spans a variety of media, from video and photography to sculptures and installations. His use of ethnographic signs is heavily influenced by recollections of the Russian avant-garde and Post-Soviet realities, along with an intimate and often touching analysis of his condition as a contemporary artist. While acutely aware of the attractiveness of the exoticism associated with the iconographical stereotypes of Central Asian art, he often refers to them with a touch of irony.
Notable recent exhibitions include The Missing Planet at the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (2019), Thinking Collections, Telling Tales at the MANA Contemporary, New Jersey (2018), Eurasian Utopia: Post Scriptum at Suwon I’Park Museum of Art, Suwon (2018), Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge, 2nd Yinchuan Biennale at the MOCA, Yinchuan (2018), Post-Nomadic Mind at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, London (2018), Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan at the Yarat in Baku (2017), The Other & Me at the Sharjah Art Museum (2014), 5th Moscow Biennale (2013), Central Asia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011, 2007, 2005), Ostalgia at the New Museum in New York (2011), Time of the Storytellers at the KIASMA in Helsinki (2007), 9th Istanbul Biennale (2005).