A Bit About Some of the Projects

This is a spiritual piece which employes symbolism to tell the story. The piece is lit within and emits a soft glow when the sun goes down.

There's a saying, "you are what you eat" but this piece makes a statement about becoming overwhelmed and influenced by what you read.

Some of the pieces were site-specific and utilized some of the elements around the theatre as inspiration. It this sinking into the manhole or materializing out of it?

The youngest participant in any workshop that I have ever participated in created this sculpture using one of her favorite dolls as the model. She was also brave enough to be encased from head to toe in a tape cast. She's 10 years old.

This couple has a 4-month old newborn but they desperately wanted to participate in the workshop. Their sculptures showed two figures walking and peering through glass walls.

This mermaid sculpture fits well in the now defunct water fountain. She's petting a fish as a mist of blue "water" surrounds her.

This surreal sculpture shows a spider-like creature in the mist of draining the life force out of her human victim.

Zafar poses next to "Happy Death", one of the more controversial works in the group. The theatre's accountant along with a policeman or 2 felt that the work promoted suicide and therefore should be removed. This is an interesting argument which didn't seem to apply to the prostitute, drug addict, or gun-wielding child also part of the show. Happy Death was allowed to stay up UNTIL...A German tourist was having breakfast in the hotel a few yards from the artwork. The head (which is a ball) was obscured by the branches and she though the had witnessed an actual suicide and fainted. The piece was removed and relocated. 

I have never seen someone so dedicated in making his sculpture as realistic as possible. What you see here is a junkie. He's surrounded by the needles he used to inject his drug of choice into his veins. Upon closer inspection, you will see blood in the needles and on his shoes and on the ground around him. The artist pricked himself to add that detail. There was even talk of adding urine and/or feces to the site but he was talked out of it.

The light posts inspired these works which at first seems obvious in meaning but upon closer inspection is much deeper. Issues of light and dark, male and female, good and bad are present in this pair of sculptures.

The backdrop and the sex worker sculpture makes this artwork complete. One complements the other. Approached in the right direction, one would believe that this is actually a prostitute waiting for her next trick. Upon closer inspection, her face in covered with US dollars.

This is a great example of the ordinary becoming extraordinary. This simple sculptural idea got a lot of attention. First, a police officer tried to buy a cigarette from her, another told her that she couldn't sit there and had to move along. A third that she represented the ills of Uzbek society and had to be removed although less than 100 yards away the real version was selling her goods on the street.

This is the most ambitious of all the sculptures. The idea was conceived the first day of the workshop and took a small army to fabricate. This piece is also open to many different interpretation. Is that a cross or part of a fence? Is the figure melting into the ground or rising out of it?