Category Archives: Feature Report

Armenia!

Feature Report

Armenians made an unusual pilgrimage this year. Although many diasporan Armenians do try to return to the homeland during their lifetime, this year the journey was a bit shorter for many of them. From September 2018 to January 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City held an exhibit titled Armenia! to celebrate the art and culture of this small nation.

I made the pilgrimage this year, albeit by accident. For the past three years, I have been making a different kind of pilgrimage. Ever since working at an Armenian summer camp, I have been getting more involved with my Armenian heritage, and have been making my way down to New York City each January to reconnect with my friends from camp. This year, my voyage serendipitously coincided with the MET’s Armenia! exhibit. Looking for something to do, and figuring that as American-Armenians we really ought to go, my five friends and I made our way to Manhattan.

The exhibit featured the largest collection of Armenian art ever displayed in a museum. The exhibition hosted over 140 objects from medieval Armenia, including intricate stone work pieces, gilded reliquaries, illuminated manuscripts, woven silk textiles, impressive carved woodwork, and altar frontals. A common element among the pieces, and in Armenian art and culture in general, are the deep Christian roots of the nation. Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity, and as such, the religious spirituality is deeply ingrained in the culture of the people, and is reflected in the artwork. Some of the most entrancing pieces of the show were the stone crosses, or khachkars. These crosses were so intricately carved that I found myself staring and wondering about the artists who devoted their lives to creating these expressions of faith. As I made my way through the exhibit, I paused to admire the delicate textiles, ornate reliquaries, and detailed carved wooden doors. But what most caught my eye were the inscriptions on the illuminated manuscripts. These elaborate manuscripts were brought to life through vibrant and gilded images as well as the calligraphically written Armenian alphabet. The Armenian alphabet was developed around 405 AD by the linguistic and ecclesiastical leader Mesrop Mashtots, and is still used today. Though I cannot read Armenian, the experience of seeing the language of my people on display in one of the nation’s greatest museums was a moving one, for myself, as it must have been for the many others who passed through this exhibit.

Armenia! did not exude the same glamour as some other installations at the MET – it was a simple exhibition structured like many others devoted to the medieval period or Christian artwork – but what brought life to this exhibit was the overwhelming feeling of representation in the room. Armenians have faced a long history of persecution and strife. Slaughtered and forcibly removed from their homeland by Ottoman forces during the – still unrecognized – Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century, Armenians have not had it easy. Armenians were a minority Christian people living under the Muslim Ottoman rule in the early 20th century when World War I broke out, and a systematic extermination of the Armenian people began. The genocide drove tens of thousands of Armenian people to escape their homeland, creating the widespread diasporan communities we see today. Though forced to flee far and wide across the globe due to their religious beliefs, the Armenian people have never lost their sense of self and their ties to the homeland.

This exhibit served as a beacon of hope, for the first time displaying the art of this small and turbulent nation on a such a large platform. I looked around and listened in on the overlapping chatter of voices. I heard families speaking Armenian, some who had moved to America over 100 years ago to flee the genocide, and some who had recently immigrated. I saw older people, young children, and even ran into a different friend from camp. More astonishing, however, were the crowds of non-Armenian people in this space, looking on with the same wonder as those whose culture these artifacts represent. Speaking with my friends afterward, I found they shared my sense of pride at seeing the story of our small nation get told through artwork not only to our people, but to such a diverse audience. One of my friends told us how her parents visited the museum as often as they could, and how her father became emotional when he observed the many enchanted non-Armenians and saw his culture projected on such a large platform through a lens of wonder and admiration.

The history of the Armenians may be one of erasure, but the persecution has been unable to stop our people and culture. Our story, like the Christian roots of the nation, is what ties together the many people worldwide who claim this small nation as home, and is what has fostered such a strong community. Art is a way of celebrating a people, and so to the Armenians, seeing their art displayed alongside some of the greatest works in history was a glorious recognition and uplifting of a people once almost wiped off the map.

It’s All Fun and Games

Feature Report
Kok-Boru final match between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan

Welcome to the third World Nomad Games. On the northern shores of Issyk Kul, just outside of the small city of Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan, more than 1,920 athletes from 74 countries gathered to compete in a variety of games that harken back to a shared and glorified past of the nomadic peoples of Eurasia.

The World Nomad Games, first held in 2014 in Kyrgyzstan, seek to reestablish the cultural link between historic nomadic traditions and the modern identity of Turkic and post-Soviet states. The 2018 event showcased 37 different competitions, including the famous kok-boru.  Kok-boru, now a steady provider of gold medals for Kyrgyzstan, was traditionally a competition intended to prepare young men for the trials of battle. Kok-boru is played on horseback in which the objective is to move the body of a goat into a corresponding raised goal. It requires strength and balance, as well as the ability to control the horse as the rider scoops the goat off the dirt pitch. Imagine a rougher version of polo.

Opening and closing with massive ceremonies of more than 1,500 singers, dancers, and actors, the games welcomed tens of thousands of spectators and numerous heads of state. The arena sat opposite a colorful backdrop that represented the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and backed up against the deep jewel blue of the world’s second largest saline lake. While there was a wide variety of participants from around the world, most of the tournament’s serious competitors were nomadic Turkic peoples from Eurasia, Eastern Europe, and Anatolia. The next games are set to be held in Turkey next year.

The games have received relatively little coverage by Western media outlets. What did get reported was either a short summary of official details, such as those offered by U.S. government-sponsored Radio Liberty, or a feature piece such as the one run in the New York Times (“Horse Wrestling. Bone Tossing. Dead Goat Polo. Let the Nomad Games Begin.”) The New York Times article was less cringe-worthy than its title suggests, but nonetheless portrayed an idyllic image of nomadic traditions bound to titillate for the upper-middle-class cultural voyeur. However, neither type of reporting discussed the significance of the World Nomad Games in the context of the political and social milieu of present-day Central Asia.

The World Nomad Games, at least those held in Kyrgyzstan, take place in a region of the world where states and their identities are actively being crafted, influenced, and challenged both from within and from abroad. The traditions celebrated here are traditions that were discouraged, if not outright repressed, during the seven decades of Soviet rule.

Like the Olympics and the World Cup, the games cannot and do not exist outside of the political sphere. There is often more at stake in a match than the first-place medal. In some cases, this is recognition—a wrestler requesting to be introduced as an athlete from the Altai Republic of the Russian Federation or another with Bashkortostan written in blue Cyrillic on the back of his white jacket. At other times, the games are a display of patriotism and nationalism, and a test of superior skills between nations whose old conflicts have not been entirely resolved.

Outside of the platform they provide for confronting issues of ethnic minority rights, recognition, and border disputes, the games reflected the inescapable influences of the outside world that grow ever more prevalent as that world grows more connected.

It was at the games that I first saw a pan-Turkic flag, an image of a unification movement that defies current state structures and traditional colonial powers. Pan-Turkism, encouraged by Turkey and its allies, has gained traction in Central Asia since gaining independence. However, the influence of Turkey was far from the only tangible evidence of outside interests. The games were sponsored by Gazprom, a Russian natural gas giant with ties to the Kremlin and whose name figured prominently on the indoor sports complex. USAID sponsored multiple programs during the week-long tournament, and multiple infrastructure projects that made the games possible would have been extremely fiscally difficult for Kyrgyzstan without Chinese aid.

A ticket to the World Nomad Games is an opportunity to immerse oneself in the culture and traditions of Eurasia. It’s a chance to practice Russian with the Kyrgyz gentleman in the next seat. It’s a moment to enjoy a shot of vodka with the guest-house owner before heading to the arena for the kok-boru final. It’s an occasion to dance with near strangers to musicians from Kazakhstan, from Yakutia, and from Tajikistan.

But it’s also an opportunity to take stock of who-all is making the most of their respective opportunity. Humanitarian groups, political movements, businesses, and yes, formalized states are all vying for the attention of viewers everywhere. The rules, if so strong a word can be used, are neither collectively recognized, nor accepted with equal willingness. The days of relative peace in which to grapple with domestic struggles are lost to those states that came to be in the era of the 24-hour news cycle. Kyrgyzstan and its siblings, situated in a region deemed strategic by multiple world powers, represent the perfect place to play a strong hand.

There are many games being played in Central Asia. Not all of them are as straightforward as kok-boru.