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Ghamal Bokonbaev

Ghamal Bokonbaev

In Bishkek, you can find a street named after the Bokonbaev, and the texts of the Bokonbaevs are obligatory reading in schools. Gamal Bokonbaev shares his name with the renowned  classics of Kyrgyz literature Joomart Bokonbaev.

During his younger years, Gamal was a rebellious art practitioner who challenged the system and norms. Today, he is a well-established and respected figure. The documented performance gains new meaning over the years, reflecting how one can become a monument in their own right.

Gamal Bokonbaev is an established art critic, curator, and chief editor of an art magazine regularly published by the Union of Artists of Kyrgyzstan. He is a prominent figure in contemporary Kyrgyzstan.


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THE MAN WHO MADE HIMSELF ON HIS OWN.

Idea: Ulan Djaparov

Cameraman: Ernest Abdrazakov

Photo and video of perfomanse documentation 1998


In Bishkek historical and memorial places were mainly formed in the middle of the last century. Boulevard «Erkindik» (Boulevard of Independence, former Boulevard of Felix Dzerzhinsky, renamed in 1994) is thread with the history of the city and the republic in the form of monuments made at the time of the Soviet power. The monument of Djoomart Bokonbaev (1910 – 1944), poet, dramatist, front-line soldier is installed at the crossing of Boulevard of Dzerzhinsky and Street of Djoomart Bokonbaev in 1946 by the sculptor Olga Monuilova who studied in Stroganov College in the same course with Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The bronze sculpture at the end of the last century disappeared in the mysterious manner – it happened in the epoch of mass export of expensive nonferrous metals. The bust was not found, probably, the thieves managed to melt it and sell it to China. Thus, this memorial place gains a contradictory, hard, non-made-up story; consequently, we are observing the process of origin of the object that has sacral signs in the structure of the city. The authorities are busy with remaking history with the help of new symbol-monuments – it is to contemporary art representatives’ good. The authors using the methods of artefact decided to intensify artificially this process and to mystify the process of forming a new mythology of the city and the republic. The authors artificially made the situation – a subject with the surname Bokonbaev devoting to the Day of Independence of the Republic decided to climb up and to stand on the empty pedestal and even tried to rename the nameboard. This joke has already been fixed in the consciousness of the city inhabitants – the story of place sacralization, from which the monument was stolen, is going on!