Another mural in the Bactria center.

Made lots of new friends while installing this work.

Murals by Dushambe artist Farrukh Negmatzade at Bactria

Evgenii Chervi Makshakov murals painted during his master classes at Bactria.

We choose some of the photos from the shoot and used as a reference for this painting.

photo exercises with the artist at the Bactria cultural center in Dushambe.

Getting There

The first time I met Mark Jenkins was on the Uzbekistan Airlines check-in line in Frankfurt - our transfer airport on our way to Tashkent from NYC.  At check-in in NYC, it was unclear whether our bags would go straight through to Tashkent or if we’d have to collect them in Frankfurt, and re-check-in for our flight to Tashkent. We did not have boarding passes for the last leg of our flight. Unwilling to take the chance of loosing our bags halfway through the trip we opted for the latter – a decision we’d made separately. After about 30 minutes of indecision and staring at the departure board for my gate number, which never materialized, I decided to go through passport control and bolted for the Uzbekistan Airlines ticket counter. The line was long and slow. With departure time 40 minutes away I was sure that I was going to miss my flight. I overheard the conversation between the American guy in front of me and the check-in lady. I was Mark Jenkins. We were in the same predicament. After brief introductions, we were face to face with the check-in lady who nicely grilled us about how much our already checked bags weighed. There’s a 20kg (44lbs) limit per bag.  Any overage, and we’d have to pay. We lied and said our bags weighed less. There is also a 5kg limit on hand luggage. Mine weighed in at 15kg. For a moment the check-in lady and I stared each other down, she blinked first and said she’ll indicate in the computer that my bag was indeed 5kg but there’s a risk that I might be stopped, get a re-weigh and charged. “Make it look light”, she said.

We made it to the gate with plenty of time to spare because the flight was delayed. When we finally arrived in Tashkent, a sea of tourists, many of them in groups, descended upon the six passport-control booths. We wondered if our luggage made and was relieved when we saw Mark’s bags materialize on the belt. However, that relief was short-lived. My 1 bag did not make it, only to find out later that it’s scheduled to arrive three days later.

Global Art Lab 2011

CEC ArtsLink’s Global Art Lab continued in the Spring of 2011 with a visit to New York by six artists from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. During their intensive trip, the group met with organizations and artists working in the fields of public art and socially engaged art and visited a wide range of contemporary arts museums, galleries, and arts centers. Following this visit to NYC the program participants, together with CEC ArtsLink, will choose 4 US artists to travel to Central Asia to conduct workshops and seminars in September and October, 2011.
Through meetings with some of New York’s leading organizations in the field of public art, including Creative Time, Third Rail Projects, No Longer Empty, the Percent for Art Fund, and Wooster Collective, the Central Asian artists learned not only how public art projects are designed and implemented in the U.S., but also about the wide range of artistic practices. They also conversed with numerous US artists working in the public realm including Clarina Bezzola, Marisa Jahn, Kendal Henry, Daniel Gallegos, and Jason Eppink.
The program was not limited to meetings and conversation, however. The group collaborated with the artist Gabriel Reese on the creation of a large scale work on an outside wall in Brooklyn, spent the day at The Point in the Bronx learning about the important role of murals and graffiti in this community and helping a local artist complete a community mural, and toured galleries and public art works in Soho and Chelsea with the art critic Agnes Berecz. In short, the 9-day program was filled to the brim with the best of the best in NYC public art today and was designed to encourage and explore possibilities of future cultural discourse between artists from both the US and Central Asia.
The Global Art Lab 2011 participants include:

• Bermet Borubaeva - Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
• Evgenii Kondratev - Tashkent, Uzbekistan
• Andrei Lomanov - Tashkent, Uzbekistan
• Evgenii Makshakov - Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
• Dmitrii Petrovskii - Bishkek, Krygzstan
• Abdullojon Ubaidulloev - Dushanbe, Tajikistan

This Fall, the Global Art Lab initiative continues with US artist Gabriel Reese conducting a street art festival at the Bactria Cultural Centre in Dushanbe, Tajikistan; US artists Kendal Henry and Mark Jenkins to conduct public art workshops at Ilkhom Theater in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and JF Beltran and Scott Minneman bring their Magic Story Table; and Andrea Steudel (Minneapolis) to work with local artists to present her Mobile Projection Theater - in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.