Ossetian Sketches
Painting Symposium in Vladikavkaz in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. August 2007
Painting Symposium in Vladikavkaz in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. August 2007
In September 1997 I visited an art fair in Barcelona and walked around passing each stand with about as much enthusiasm as walking around a department store; so much decoration, so much wallpaper. Don’t take me wrong, I don’t want to appear to be a cultural snob but at my age, and I hate to admit it, but at my age an awful lot of what I see looks very familiar. So when I marched past Ir-Art Gallery’s stand I slowed to a crawl and then to a stop. The work by the Ossetian artists stood out immediately because of its unique vision; everything else in the fair was the usual ‘Western Art Style’ that you see from Madrid to Berlin to Miami. The work on show here was unaffected by international styles, trends or fashions. I made enquiries. Since that first meeting with Gala Tebieva, the director of Ir-Art Gallery, I have maintained contact and even participated on three occasions in exhibitions with Ir-Art Gallery in the Moscow art fair, Art Manege. So when, in August 2007, I got a phone call inviting me to take part in a Symposium to promote and share in the artistic and cultural heritage of Ossetia with artists from both Ossetia and other regions within the Russian Federation I immediately accepted.
Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, lies some 1,750 kms south-south-west of Moscow (Barcelona to Birmingham is 1,700 kms). The train journey takes 35 hours; the time needed to go by road is any ones guess, but by plane it’s just 2 hours. There are no direct flights from Western Europe and so a stop over has to be made at Domodedova, one of Moscow’s three commercial airports and the one which handles most of Russia’s internal flights. We flew to Domodedova with Austrian Airlines, an excellent company which we would recommend. You will no doubt be relieved to hear that Aeroflot has now sold off most of its Soviet era planes and now flies the European Airbus on all its international flights. However those Soviet generation planes are still flying as they were bought up by the ex-Soviet republics like Uzbekistan and the many new charter companies which started up in business after the fall of communism. One of those companies is Siberian Airlines, the one we had the pleasure to fly to Vladikavkaz with on their ex-Aeroflot TU154-M. Some people moan if there’s even a slight delay but not me, I think flying is a privilege and a thrill, especially when you get the chance, like I did the first time I flew to Russia, of screwing the thing back together. This time I solved the problem of the expanding seat belt of the passenger in front of me by re-screwing the bracket into the mounting. (After these charter companies have made enough money to upgrade their own fleet they usually sell their planes to countries like Cuba and Nigeria and many other African states. However I think it’ll be a few years before they’ll be flying the new Sukhoi SuperJet 100). I love going to Russia; every little detail is such fun.
Welcoming committee at Vladikavkaz International airport
On a bright sunny day and from an altitude of some 9,500 metres one gets a fantastic view of the Russian plain below. What struck me was the size of the fields, the majority of them square. Huge fields and few trees, where were the people? Where were the towns, the villages? Who was working the land? I imagined that these huge fields were the consequence of the Soviet Collective Farms. For two hours we flew over a babushka’s patchwork quilt and it was only as we descended and came closer to them that I realised how truly vast and underpopulated the countryside is - what’s it like in Siberia? Russia is the largest country in the world but it only has 140,000,000 people; the population of France and Germany combined. We landed in Vladikavkaz together with the rain and were greeted by an almighty downpour and a clap of thunder ... or was that just the undercarriage giving way?
First impressions are lasting ones and so I was keen to capture my first glimpse of Vlady - as the locals call their town - with my camera but as I stood at the top of the steps and trained my lens on Vlady’s terminal building I noticed a vigorously waging singular finger, had it been plural I would have interpreted the gesture as a wave. I replaced my camera. People in uniforms the world over seem to have perfected this mannerism, this tick; the mono digit wave.
Inside the terminal the officer at the passport control positively beamed with excitement when he saw our foreign passports, partly to relieve the boredom and also to welcome real, genuine, non Russian speaking foreigners to his country. All the other passengers were ignored and either waited or just walked on whilst we were inscribed into a large and scruffy hand written old ledger propped up on the inoperative brand spanking new baggage scanner. The old and the new worlds coexisting in quaint harmony.
Anxious that we might be having problems Gala, who was waiting on the other side of the flimsy barrier, ignored the No Entry sign and came to our linguistic rescue and with the paper work in order we were allowed to pass. Waiting with Gala were Oleg Basaev and Fatima Abaeva. Oleg is an artist and charmer and took Helen under his wing. Fatima is a treasure. Full stop. We all know people who are highly intelligent, we all know people who are talented, sensitive and thoughtful etc. So finding all those qualities bundled into one personality is an extra delight. I like meeting people.
