Art cannot be forced to keep silent

Recently at the launch of the Crimean Tatar culture center Tamga in Kyiv, the head of artistic studio El Cheber, which has moved from Crimea, Rustem Skybin said that Crimean Tatar culture in Crimea is endangered. That’s true. Most of the well-known masters of art, workers of culture, so to say, seniors of national art, had by far for the first time to leave their Fatherland temporarily. They continue to create beyond Crimea. So, the newly created Crimean Tatar Culture Center Tamga, according to the idea of its initiators, should become an open venue for communication and interaction of artists from mainland Ukraine and Crimea, which has been annexed by Russia.

“Under present-day circumstances the Crimean Tatars have turned out to be hostages to the complicated situation,” Rustem Skybin noted, “Today our culture is endangered, and we see a possibility to preserve it and continue our activity only in Ukraine, its mainland part. The cultural center plans to hold regular exhibits, meetings, seminars; works of literature and national souvenirs will be presented.”

However, the employees of the Crimean Tatar Museum of Art consider that many young people who had chosen the way of creative work have stayed in their homeland. Many of them haven’t finished their studies and are unable to leave Crimea. They were taught by famous teachers, but today they have to cooperate at a distance. They cannot refuse from creative work, and the duty of museum workers is to help them continue their creative development, find topics and shapes of creative work.

In fact two directions have been shaped in Crimean Tatar art, considers art critic Edie Memetova. The majority of the masters hasn’t accepted the new Crimean conditions and considers it as best to create under conditions of freedom, whereas many people who take interest in art cannot leave their fatherland and have to create in Crimea. Today these are two wings of Crimean art. They mutually supplement one another because, actually, they make up an integral direction and today’s youth will pick from the veterans till it is able to reach the acme.

The exhibit of works of young artists, masters of decorative applied art, “At the outset,” which has opened recently at the Crimean Tatar Museum of Art, serves this very purpose. Many of them, like embroiderers who have created fezzes are very young, they are studying at schools and at the same time are mastering the subtle and fantastically complicated art of sewing on velvet. The exhibit presents practically all genres and techniques: various techniques of embroidery, ceramics, painting, watercolors, felt work, pastel, modeling, linocut, and many other spheres. “The participants of the exhibit are at the outset of a great creative way of conquering the peaks of art. But each of them has a special style and manner, their own vision of the world,” Memetova says. “We are sure that both wings of our art will give our people the power to stand today and find our Fatherland again.”