Central Asia could have gone the same way at the Venice Biennial as Azerbaijan. Gulnara, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s permanent dictator Islam Karimov, would reportedly have liked to organize the pavilion herself. From her Facebook page we learn that she is ‘an Uzbekistan diplomat, professor and businessperson. She is the founder and chairperson of The Forum of Culture and Arts of Uzbekistan Foundations Board of Trustees and a number of NGOs focused on cultural and social aspects of life in Uzbekistan.’ Under the stage name Googoosha – the lady being an amateur performer besides diplomat, professor and businessperson – she has joined Julio Iglesias on stage to sing ‘Besame Mucho’. (When I heard a Venetian gondolier sing the song it made me think of her and all the people tortured in Uzbek prisons). Yes, Gulnara would have the wherewithal to organize a national representation of Uzbek art.

But alas for her, while the Azeri dictatorship seems to fall outside the art world’s restricted realm of political consciousness, the Central Asian ones seem to fall within, and are repudiated for the time being. Accordingly, as has been the case since the region’s first participation in 2005, the representation has been organized by international NGOs. Two very young curators based in Norway were tasked with the effort to show recent developments in the region’s art.

Saodat Ismailova: still from Zukhra, video, 2013. Image courtesy of the Central Asian Pavilion

Unfortunately the resulting group exhibition did not show any development, other than young artists reproducing the artistic practice of the generation just ahead of them (which at that time was very refreshing and led to some masterpieces). Although I am only partially familiar with art in the region, I know more is happening than that. I’m afraid that the people involved in setting up this pavilion were not fully aware of what’s happening on the ground. But I was especially surprised to note that the curators (or commissioners) felt obliged to select one artist from each of the region’s five countries, barring Turkmenistan, thus caving in without any external pressure to the obsolete paradigm of ‘national representation’.

Maybe Googoosha or one of her consorts should be allowed to curate the next Central Asian pavilion, as long as she promises that none of the artists shall be tortured if they refuse or submit works which do not please her. If only to challenge the NGO-ish trap into which this pavilion seems to have fallen and make the artistic opposition sharpen its knives.

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