Kurgan stelae are going to ARSENALE
Today Mystetsky Arsenal is launching the 1st Kyiv International Biennale of Contemporary Art. The title project will present the ancient stone culture from the steppe, with the items provided by nine Ukrainian museums. The oldest stelae are 5,000 years old
The Day is a special media partner of ARSENALE.
These days the Yavornytsky National History Museum in Dnipropetrovsk that possesses the largest collection of stone sculptures in Ukraine sent some of its ancient statues to Kyiv. The exposition of kurgan stelae from Ukrainian museums is supposed to show not only the historical roots of our culture, but the deep origins of modernist art to European guests during Arsenale-2012, which opens at Mystetsky Arsenal on May 24. Nadia KAPUSTINA, director of the Yavornytsky History Museum and Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine told The Day about the participation of Donetsk museums in this unusual project.
“The organizers appealed to our museum because we have the largest collection of the ancient stone sculptures that portray the history and culture of the Eurasian steppe. Some restoration works are planned, as well as the publication of a book written by our researcher and archaeologist Larysa Churylova. Our kurgan stelae arrived in Kyiv just the other day.”
What is going to be displayed at the biannual exhibit?
“The most interesting sculptures of different historical periods, from Aeneolithic Age to the Middle Ages, were presented from the collection of the Dnipropetrovsk History Museum. The oldest sculptures are two to three thousand years old. There are Scythian statues, sculptures created by the ancient Turkic people, and a few Polovtsian ‘stone babas.’ Earlier in the year, a photo artist from Kyiv visited our museum. He is working on the video presentation of our collection, which numbers 90 items. I have seen his works, and I liked them a lot, he has a very unusual approach to presenting stone art. We have given eight of our sculptures to the organizers of the exhibition.”
Is the most famous piece of art, the Kernosivka Idol, going to be displayed at Arsenale-2012?
“Unfortunately, no. The exposition will be placed outdoors, and the Kernosivka Idol is displayed indoors only. Its unique features cannot be exposed to sunlight, rains, and temperature drops, which are frequent in summer. This famous sculpture was displayed at the Hermitage, German and Italian museums, and also at the Ukrainian Home in Kyiv. The Kernosivka Idol travels a lot, but it is to be displayed indoors. This piece of art created by the ancient Indo-Europeans is extremely valuable and rare. It seems that priests, in addition to stone carvers, were working on the statue too. Some researchers link the Kernosivka Idol to the Aryan god Indra, who granted light to the world according to the ancient beliefs. There are many versions of this statue’s origin. However, there still will be quite a lot of interesting items presented at the biannual exposition. For example, a small Turkic sculpture, a very rare piece of art. Besides, apart from our museum, a few museums from southern Ukraine have submitted their exhibits too.”
In ancient times the “stone babas” were placed on top of kurgans. Will the foreigners be able to comprehend the meaning of this art without its natural context?
“This issue was a topic of our discussions. I am a member of the Mystetsky Arsenal Supervisory Board, and during one of our meetings a project was presented, according to which the sculptures had to be placed under the glass, so the viewers could look at them from above. I opposed this project, since the ancient people buried only those statues, which energy potential was drained. A similar idea was turned down while creating a project of a lapidarium that is to be built in Dnipropetrovsk. As far as I know, they found another solution for Arsenale. It should also be taken into consideration that stone art possesses its own ‘individuality.’ If you take a close look at the sculptures, especially the later Polovtsian ones, you will see absolutely different faces – not just facial features, but expressions as well. The researchers think that these carvings were made to resemble certain people, important members of the kin or tribe. Nomads thought that after death their ancestors were going to help them avoid any kind of trouble. That is why those stone statues are not some generic images, but an attempt to preserve individual features of people, whose life energy potential was so great, it remained after they died. I can give you an interesting example related to this. In the middle of the 19th century, famous archaeologist Ivan Zabelin worked on the territory of Ekaterinoslav Governate. He described a case when a Ukrainian peasant woman came to the Polovtsian statue on the kurgan, placed some gifts in front of the statue, said a Christian prayer, and walked around the statue, touching it with her baby.”
So it turns out that Ukrainians felt a genetic or cultural connection to the steppe people?
“It looks like these sculptures possess a huge energy potential. I think that if you study the ancient sculpture, be it Paleolithic carvings of ‘Venus,’ or Aeneolithic figurines from Trypillia, or Scythian and Polovtsian sculptures, you will see one thing they all have in common: an image of a guardian and protector. There is such a phenomenon as cultural diffusion, when cultures exchange elements. Nomadic people that lived on the territory of Ukraine contacted with the Slavic population and the intermarriages were a common thing for them. Moreover, some Polovtsian carvings have Caucasian facial features instead of Mongoloid ones. That is why the culture of the steppe people can be considered one of the origins of Ukrainian art. It is remarkable that the Kernosivka Idol has an image of the ‘tree of life’ carved on its back, a motif that is now widely used in Ukrainian ornamental patterns, embroidery and folk paintings.”
Talks about the necessity of building a lapidarium in Dnipropetrovsk to preserve a large collection of stone sculptures have been lasting for years. At what stage is the project now?
“Recently Dnipropetrovsk City Council adopted a decision to allocate more land for construction. It turned out that private property may be in the construction zone. We are going to try and get a grant for the project. However, it should be understood that the economic crisis affected the solutions to our problems as well. We are trying to solve them in different directions, because the lapidarium construction and preservation of valuable heritage is not a whim, but an urgent necessity.”
