Faded Reds, Ardent Blues, A Portrait of Kyrgyzstan 30 Years after its Independance
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Dates2019 - 2021
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Author
- Location Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan
On August 31 2021, the republic of Kyrgyzstan celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of its independence that followed the implosion of the USSR.
The collapse was violent; a whole generation was impoverished, industries were decimated, and the ideology in force for so many decades suddenly be disowned. Many lives would be put into abeyance.
The last three decades were tumultuous. After three revolutions and eight presidents, Kyrgyzstan has seen fundamental political, economic, and social changes but has not attained the stability and welfare that successive and corrupt governments had promised.
Under a dense sky, in a landscape of mountains, birds and wind, but also of industrial ruins and polluted wastes, a conflicted nation tries to shape its future.
It is a story of existential struggle and memory, of disillusion and hope.
This series consists of intersecting stories that constitute a fragmented and subjective portrait of a little known country landlocked in Central Asia.
A former KGB officer revisits his memories, a prima ballerina offers a fake rose to a controversial hero, a mother mourns her kidnapped and murdered daughter while another mother remembers her son who fell in Afghanistan. Young girls speak of desire and feminism while the voices of older women break, recalling memories rooted in an ideology that no longer exists.
The construction of diptychs suggests secrets, reveals contradictions or unexpected similarities and aims to convey the place's enduring poetical phantasmagoria.