Reference points include the story of the Berberov family, who once lived in Baku with their pet lion, King I. Achieving fame across the Soviet Union following a movie role, the lion was then mistakenly shot dead by a policeman. The exhibition also draws inspiration from the 1967 Soviet Circus documentary ‘National Circus’, investigating the representation of Soviet republics through distinct performance groups such as Azerbaijan’s Nazirov gymnastic group, the Uzbek clown Akram Yusupov and the Tashkenbaev family of tightrope walkers. The Soviet circus was a censorship-free and even anarchic space, almost out of regime control. While being part of the cultural underground, it remained a form of mainstream entertainment showing the connection between freedom in circus space and postmodern theorist Susan Melrose’s concept of theatre depoloticization.  

Through its unpicking of fact and fiction around the shared histories, the exhibition furthers Makhacheva’s ongoing interrogation into the lasting tensions between tradition, modernity and cultural authenticity from the transitional period of the Soviet into the post-Soviet landscape, towards the post post-Soviet futures.

This exhibition is curated by Suad Garayeva Maleki.

About the Artist 

Taus Makhacheva (b.1983, lives and works in Moscow, Russia) is known predominantly for her performance and video works that critically examine what happens when different cultures and traditions come into contact with one another. Having grown up in Moscow with cultural origins in the Caucasus region of Dagestan, her artistic practice is informed by this personal connection with the co-existing worlds of pre and post Sovietisation. Oftentimes humorous, her works attempt to test the resilience of images, objects and bodies in today’s world.