Bakhyt Bubikanova

Once, during a lecture on ornaments, an idea struck me—that a rhombus resembles the shape of an entrance portal. I wanted to present this entrance in an extremely minimalist manner using our carpet as the foundation. So, what if I divided it into three parts? Essentially, I would transform the two-dimensional into the three-dimensional. This deviation from minimalism allows me to extract volume from a flat medium…

My work and life are intertwined. I always learn something about life, its meaning, what is God, who I am, who people are, what space is… I start with something, an idea, but I never know what will come out in the end—that happens during the creative process. Because it’s not just me who works, the space and everything else works too…

There’s this concept of “bifurcation”—when you can’t go here and can’t go there. Artists often superficially latch onto general ideas—social, political, and also common archetypes and symbols. I aspire to delve deeper than that. I can’t use Kazakh attire because it has already been extensively used. Or I need to approach things differently to avoid repetition—with Almagul Menlibayeva, with Said Atabekov, or with the Madanovs. I don’t like overtly political themes because I’m not knowledgeable about politics. I don’t want it to be like a mere illustration for a newspaper headline. I’m not allowed to, not allowed to, and so I keep digging deeper and deeper, refusing to stay on the surface, and going deeper…

To me, art is a means of understanding life. This is the way I comprehend everything around me. When I uncover something for myself, it marks the completion of a certain stage in my life and the beginning of something new…

In the past, I refrained from revisiting previous themes or works. However, over the past two years, I have been requested to do so. It has intrigued me to observe that while these works were once physically and emotionally challenging, I now approach them with ease as these themes no longer hold significance for me. They belong to a distant past. In other words, I let go of the past and extend myself forward.

Bubikanova employed social media and societal norms in their various forms, navigating within the realm of human rules and relationships. She utilized diverse mediums such as painting, collage, video, performance, and intervention, allowing them to interchange and complement each other, emphasizing her life collisions or the pressing issues of the time. Every day, Bubikanova transformed her life into a unique “performance-drome,” constantly generating artistic gestures as she lived and interacted with the world. Personal experiences, observations, aesthetic and ethical inquiries, as well as fundamental and paradigmatic aspects of art, remained at the forefront of her creative agenda.

The performance The Sower: The Great Artist B. Bubikanova (2020) has an interesting backstory. Due to the artist’s ongoing battle with illness, she couldn’t always be present at her own exhibitions or carry out planned performances. As a result, two invited artists took on her role in The Sower. To honor the author, the invited performers wore badges that read: “The Great Artist B. Bubikanova.” They performed a simple act, taking turns scattering banana peels and collecting them. The performance took place at Essentai Mall, one of the most upscale shopping centers in Almaty, as part of the Food for Thought exhibition curated by Olga Veselova and Vladislav Sludsky.

In this instance, Bubikanova remained true to herself and conveyed a multilayered message through a performance. Seasoned audiences would primarily interpret it as a satirical critique of consumerist society, which indulges in a life surrounded by expensive commodities and elitist products without generating anything meaningful. The banana peel served as a symbol of the superficiality inherent in such consumerist existence. It unavoidably also brings about a dialogue with the controversial artwork Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan that features a banana affixed to a wall with duct tape, which was sold in three editions for $120,000 each at the Art Basel Miami fair in 2019. More discerning viewers would also recognize the allusion to the novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov. In this classic satirical novel, the conman protagonist Ostap Bender impersonates an artist and paints a sower who is scattering government bond certificates. In this performance, the artist offered us the key to unraveling its essence which extends beyond the act of scattering bananas. It revolves around the substitution of the artist with duplicates, questioning Bubikanova’s qualitative attributes and exploring the formation of artistic authority. It raises thought-provoking questions such as: What defines an artist? What is the value of an artist? What constitutes authentic art? Who determines the truthfulness of art? Which is more important, the idea or the execution? These are fundamental questions about the nature of art that transcend time.

Bubikanova avoided explicit connotations and instead opted to operate in the periphery, as if on the fringes of the main narrative. However, this approach granted her the ability to merge meanings and mediums and infuse irony and even sarcasm, resulting in a cohesive and innovative body of work that demanded viewers to independently interpret its significance. More often than not, she either repelled or attracted people, drawing individuals into her orbit like a supernova that ignites the universe of art to evolve while concurrently creating black holes. These portals are illuminated by the reflected meaning of her gestures. Essentially, she “extends herself forward.”