Photo: Lisa Ross, 2007

Created over a series of journeys to China’s Xinjiang region, photographer Lisa Ross captures a kaleidoscope of spiritual energy in her exhibit ‘Living Shrines of Uyghur China,’ which shows through July 8 at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. Ross’s series of vibrant images juxtaposes airy Islamic holy sites, called mazars, against Xinjiang’s stark desert landscape. A number of the mazars, which honor the lives of Muslim saints, have been maintained for hundreds of years. With some shrines almost psychedelic in appearance, Ross adeptly channels the vivacity of Uyghur culture without featuring a single human being in her photographs. Her serene portraits illustrate the harmonious intersection of religion, nature and this graceful and austere form of architecture.

Photo: Lisa Ross, 2007

Living Shrines of Uyghur China: Photography by Lisa Ross is at The Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W. 17 St., New York, NY 10011 until July 8, 2013. rmanyc.org

And finally…if you are nowhere near New York , there is a book Living Shrines of Uyghur China to accompany the exhibition, published by Monacelli Press, 2013.

And don’t forget that Steppe 4 contains a 30-page feature article on these Muslim shrines in the Taklamakan, with photos by Lisa Ross and text by the historian Alexandre Papas which follows the travelogue of an eighteenth-century Sufi saint amongst these mazars of the desert. Click here to buy Steppe 4.

Lenin Palace, 1970, Almaty, Kazakhstan © Simona Rota

Here at Steppe we have a great passion for the Soviet architecture of the Central Asian states. As an expression of the progress of thought, whether state or personal, this architecture is a real eye opener, and is rightly, finally, finding its place in helping to define and deconstruct a very complex time. Frederic Chaubin’s book CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed (reviewed in Steppe 9) brought us wonderful photos of some of the most exotic examples of post-war Soviet architecture across the former republics of the USSR, but in the exhibition ‘Trespassing Modernities’ at Salt Galata in Istanbul,  Georg Schöllhammer delves deeper into the evolution of post-Stalinist Soviet architecture.

Following Stalin’s death in 1953,  the tenets of Socialist Realism were rejected in favour of a new urbanisation based on a drive towards scientific and technological progress. Architects developed a new form of late Soviet modernism drawing on both international architecture and Soviet modernism from the 1920s. By the 1960s, a counterculture had begun to emerge in which architects used both their physical distance from Moscow and their move away from the official architectural canon to stamp a new (often nationalist) identity on their modernist ideas.  The Central Asian republics are home to many of the most striking buildings from the 1960s onwards and are presented here with plans, scale models, drawings, photographs, films and ephemera.

Oh to be in Istanbul to see it…

Residential complex (Almaty, Kazakhstan) Photo: Markus Weisbeck (In the context of the project Local Modernities)

Trespassing Modernities is at Salt Galata, Istanbul from 8 May – 11 August, 2013. The exhibition is based on the research of Local Modernities, a project by Georg Schöllhammer, Ruben Arevshatyan, Klaus Ronneberger, Markus Weisbeck and Heike Ander, which initiated the exhibition Soviet Modernism 1955-1991 Unknown Stories (2012) by Architekturzentrum Wien. For more information, click here.

Father to a four-year old daughter, Chingiz started experimenting with designs after she was born. Friends and family liked them, people he didn’t even know liked them and he kept going. Now he sells his designs (in charming cardboard boxes stuffed with sawdust) at various children’s shops in Almaty. I particularly like this red deer (below), which reminds me of the deer used as a motif by the Scythians with its head forward, antlers at the ready. Knowing how my son (22 months) loves to push things on wheels around, I couldn’t resist.

But beware. As Chingiz points out on his website, “please note that even if Kazakhstan feels like the center of the world to us, we are not that wired into good logistics, online banking, efficient customs and mass production. I am not sure why. It might be because the sky-high Tien Shan mountains keep us kind of isolated, or because our feeling of self-importance gets in the way. In any case, buying things from me is not that easy if you are abroad.”

If you like Chingiz’s stuff, you’re going to need to live in Almaty or have a kind friend living there who’s willing to bring stuff back for you. You can find out more about Chingiz’s designs at www.cherrypapa.com and you can buy his products at Obuvenok on the corner of Zheltoksan and Kurmangazy.

Instructional poem for pigeon-fanciers by Valih Musavi (1788) (c) British Library Board

There is still time to rush out and see the British Library’s latest Exhibition “Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire”, which closes on April 2nd. It might not, at first sight, appear to be a natural stamping ground for Steppe readers, more interested in the lands further north. However, it goes without saying that the clue is in the name. The Mughal Empire was ultimately sprung from the Mongol and Turkic dynasties of Central Asia, descended from Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. Its founder, Babur (1483-1530) was born in Ferghana and briefly ruled in Samarkand, but was forced from his homeland by Uzbek invaders, and ultimately moved his power base to Kabul and then India. The exhibition shows beautifully how as a result the Indian Mughals were the heirs to the courtly culture of Central Asia, whether the gardens, the traditions of miniature painting which look back to the great artist Bizhad of Herat, or the love of mystical Persian verse. A giant terrapin carved from a block of jade the size of a pillow also reminds us that the Mughals looked not just to Central Asia but wider afield. Where else did the jade come from but the Chinese oases of the Taklamakan Desert via the opulent ways of the Silk Road?

For more information, visit http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/mughalindia/index.html

We are lucky enough at Steppe to have published two articles (Issues 6 and 7) using Carolyn Drake’s photos of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya; those two life-giving rivers are at the heart of Central Asia. They define the region absolutely. The land between them, called Mawarannahr (the land beyond the river) by the Arabs, is the settled heart of Central Asia, the land outside them the haunt of nomads, and the interaction of the two provides the history, the culture, the arts that we know and  love today.

Carolyn’s book ‘Two Rivers’ is currently in production, planned to appear this summer, in 2013. Of Caroyln’s obsession with these two rivers she writes, ‘The stories I found there defied many of my assumptions about the world. Stories about the diversity of Islam, intersecting languages, legendary empires, warlords, and poets; about contested borders, smuggling, energy surpluses and shortages, and political oppression.

The rivers tie these stories together in the most literal, spatial sense, but also on a more abstract level, raising universal questions about the fragility and resilience of life, and the limits of human power.’

Like Carolyn’s photographs ,the accompanying text by Elif Batuman gets to the nub of a situation at the same time as making subtle statements on humankind.

Because we are such fans of Carolyn’s work, we are keen to direct you to her fundraising page on Kickstarter. Visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/960787969/two-rivers and see what it is all about…

Sumalak (photo: J Cleuziou)

Mahbuba lives near the Zelyoni bazaar. Last year, she was responsible for preparing the sumalak for her mahalla (neighborhood). Sumalak is not just a simple brown wheatgerm soup but a recipe which brings together the whole community. After the coldish winter months, Nowruz—the spring holidays, celebrates the beginning of spring and the renewal of life. Sumalak, made from the first fresh green plants of the year, has the power to cleanse your body of its winter lethargy and prepare it for the coming year.

Mahbuba making Sumalak (photo: J Cleuziou)

The wheat is cooked on a wood fire for over 12 hours and is constantly tended by one of the neighbourhood women. Neighbours come back and forth—some bring money, others bring wood for the fire, and some bring gossip. Mahbuba runs everywhere; she brings more hot tea, rearranges the sweets on the tablecloth.  Overnight, the women watch the sumalak together. They sing ‘Sumalak dar josh mo kafcha zanem, Digaron dar khob mo doiracha zanem’, which means ‘The sumalak is boiling and we are stirring it, others are asleep and we are playing doira’. Then, everyone tries the sumalak. It is sweet enough…yes. The sumalak is divided between the neighbours, who take it back home in pots to put on the table for Nowruz.

But this year, Mahbuba will marry her older daughter; she does not have the money and the energy to organize the sumalak festivity. Who will take the lead in her mahalla? So far, she doesn’t know.

Norman Foster’s Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, Astana (Photo: flickr/M. Ibrayev)

It is little more than a week since I saw the ice village and sculptures erected here in Astana for New Year, knocked down – a clear signal that spring is on the way. For some time large-scale tulip decorations and lights have been appearing out of the snow drifts around Astana in preparation for Nowruz, and they are beginning to look a little less incongruous, as the skies are finally blue and the temperature during the day above zero.

Nowruz is celebrated here as a symbol of spring renewal and the triumph of love, unity and friendship; all ideas which have a special resonance in a country where the festival was banned under Soviet rule until independence in 1991, and where there are one hundred and twenty national groups amongst the population. The area in front of the Norman Foster pyramid, otherwise known as the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, is now occupied by a large stage and multiple yurts, in preparation for today’s celebrations, which, if last year’s are anything to go by, will involve numerous dancers in traditional and flower costumes, on acres of fake grass. Tonight will also see a spectacular laser show in the area around the Baiterek tower.  Kazakh friends tell me this is a time to gather with your family and there has been an exodus from Astana as people take advantage of the 4-day weekend to head home, where their mothers are already preparing their special variation on the traditional thick soup, Nowruz koje.  This involves 7 main ingredients, water, salt, fat, flour, grains (rice, wheat, barley etc.) milk, and with Kazakhs, as they frequently tell me, being the world’s second biggest consumers of meat (after wolves), a considerable quantity of lamb,  beef or horse.  These ingredients symbolise happiness, wisdom, health, wealth, growth, divine protection and luck.

Traditionally Nowruz is also a period of spring cleaning, evident around Astana after a winter which has seen an unusual amount of snow, causing problems for the normally very efficient snow clearing teams.  Today the detritus of a winter is emerging from the snow drifts, and the army of Akimat employees, has switched to cleaning up rubbish.  Water is a big problem however, with large puddles forming as drains struggle to cope with the thaw, and sudden cave-ins in the roads, where they have not.  The river is speckled with fishermen and the air full of the sound of their drills as they grab the opportunity for a last afternoon out on the ice before it becomes too thin to hold them any longer.  Thoughts are turning to allotments, and peppers, tomatoes and the like are being sown in preparation for planting out at the end of May, once frost danger is past. Our apple trees, although buried in snow to about 5 foot up the trunk, have suddenly produced buds.  All extremely welcome sights given that the first snowfall was on the 8^th of November last year, and the ground has been white ever since.

‘Untitled (from Dreams Series)’ by Jamol Usmanov (born 1961), oil on canvas, 2010, 110 x 145cm

If you’re up on your Uzbek Usmanov’s, you may well have heard of Alisher Usmanov – the billionaire steel magnate who has successfully diversified into telecommunications and new media, including a clever purchase of facebook shares that, it seems, netted him £1.4bn at their IPO last May. But you may well not have heard of Jamol Usmanov, an  Uzbek painter influenced by Sufi philosophy and the Eastern Sufi poetry of Rumi, Navoi, Nizami et al, although we like to hope he too will become a household name.

Usmanov’s paintings are allegorical, pregnant with meaning, and from the viewer’s perspective, highly meditative. Untitled (from Dreams Series), above, is dedicated to his son, whose dream is carefully encrypted: birds carrying cherries in their beaks are bearers of good tidings, while the snake is a symbol of wisdom, flying birds are incarnations of the soul and the ornaments they carry signify Creation.

The painting is one of 47 works carefully chosen by Sothebys London as part of their first ever selling exhibition from the Caucasus and Central Asia on show from Monday, 4th March -Tuesday, 12 March 2013 at their headquarters in New Bond Street.  The exhibition highlights art that has emerged from the region since it opened up following the collapse of the Soviet Union, with practices stemming from both institutionalised Socialist Realism and Non-Conformist Art of the 1970s and 1980s, right up to contemporary art from the present day.

Horsemeat section, Green Bazaar, Almaty (flickr/sly06)

A Kazakh nomads’ expression states, ‘Kazakhs are born on horseback’. If we take a leisurely canter from nomad life into the present day, we see the survival of horsemeat as a luxurious food in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Whilst on academic business there, I grasped the opportunity to pursue a sober study of this neglected subject. I visited two yamarka (outdoor markets) – one in Almaty, the former capital and largest city; the other 500km north in Stepnogorsk, a former closed Soviet town with notable levels of uranium, rare metals and gold.

Perhaps the best-known horse product from the steppes of Central Asia is kumis (fermented mare’s milk). In a restaurant in Astana I drank repeatedly from a palm-sized bowl of kumis. Once the sickly smell was put aside by application of my sensory self-discipline it tasted better and better, with a tang vaguely reminiscent of some highland malts.

So, what does horsemeat taste like? The extremely lean cuts are rich, dark and deep-red, slightly sweet, redolent of venison but much more tender. Because the horses are steppe reared, in what must be an original source of the term ‘free range’, there is little fat. In the great intestinal sausage the fat tastes like the richest butter.

At the rear of the market in Stepnogorsk, arranged in rows of wooden stalls, was the covered, refrigerated meat section. Through plastic cold doors there were about 40 stalls in a clean and chilly room. Only one sold horsemeat (and beef). The others sold beef, chicken, and mutton.

On their display table, amongst other meats, were four raw cuts arranged in a square – çürek (heart), baür (liver), kharim (stomach), and öpke (lungs). They also had Khazi (the main rib) and the mane, a beehive-shaped cross-section of meat and fat, both special delicacies. For the most respected guests there is an oval fillet from the chops, called omirtkIa. The oblong rump is called kesekyet, which means ‘meat to be divided’, and is used in bestirmek, the delicious preserved meat which is served sliced cold.

There were various sausages, ready for cooking, called shruzikI and kIarta (the small intestine, stuffed with chopped offal). And, of course, the great intestinal sausage (5-6cm diameter), where two thin strips of meat and fat are cut from the edge of the length of the rib cage and stuffed with crushed garlic, salt and pepper. A 60cm length is then tied off, cooked, and eaten cold. When I commented that not all parts of the horse were on display, they looked me in the eye and told me ‘we eat all of the horse!’

In the Green Bazaar in Almaty, the horsemeat was sold under a sign saying ‘Konina’, a separate part of the meat section of the market, which was as clean and spotless as Stepnogorsk. Each meat section displayed a small, tin flag, featuring a silhouette of the appropriate animal. I was reminded that Mareshchal Kutusov, after the battle of Borodino, repeatedly intoned that Napoleon’s army would be eating horseflesh in Russia before the winter of 1812 was out. He used the words loshadinoye miase, meaning beast-of-burden, as opposed to konili, meaning noble steed.

If the Kazakhs had known that horsemeat was so readily available in the UK, they might not have had it specially imported for their athletes during the 2012 London Olympics. For those wishing to rush out to their nearest Kazakh market and stock up on the real deal (or at least something advertised as what it actually is), a one- to two-year-old horse of 150-160 kg (dead weight) is slightly less expensive than the five-year-old horse 280 kg (dead weight), which is considered the better meat. In Almaty they said that a nine-month colt tasted even better. Like spring lamb or sucking pig, I suppose.

Robert Chenciner has recently published Dragons, Padlocks and Tamerlane’s Balls (Bennet and Bloom, 2013. Price £50), a material-cultural memoir of textiles, art, metals and myths.