“Post-truth is pre-fascism …. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place.” — Timothy Snyder
We live in a landscape where only a fraction of what happens is reported in media outlets. It is exciting to see someone claiming to represent areas of the world that deserve more attention. With her recent book, Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion, and parallel ongoing curatorial project, Sara Raza is ostensibly spotlighting artists from areas of the world that have been traditionally on the margins with her proclaimed focus on the newish and entirely accurate idea of the Soviets as colonizers. Punk Orientalism is an overview of the work of 30 artists and one collective born in Iran (six), Afghanistan (one), Kyrgyzstan (three), Uzbekistan (two), Azerbaijan (three), Bulgaria (one), Lebanon (one), Turkey (two), Greece (one), Russia (two), Tunisia (one), Georgia (three), Saudi Arabia (one), Kazakhstan (one), Kenya (one), and Kuwait (one).
The artists gathered together in Raza’s book represent former Soviet spheres in the Caucasus and Central Asia. One out of the Caucasus’ three colonized countries is conspicuously absent. Oddly, she adds other artists to her collection outside of the Caucasus and Central Asia, such as Iran, Turkey, “the Arab world,” in her words, and Afghanistan, with the justification that they had “…complex relationship[s] with the USSR during and after the Cold War.” There is no mention of other regional countries with extremely complex Soviet relationships, such as Egypt, Syria, and Israel. These are just the more obvious problems with Punk Orientalism, which falls apart when it’s more closely examined.
Minor issues, such as typos, can be overlooked (for example, the art project Ororborum is listed throughout as Ouroborom). But overall, Punk Orientalism, which Raza has developed for at least a decade, is incoherent, uneven, and often false. In her introduction, she writes that punk in her usage is “… [n]ot the story of the marginalized or oppressed minorities.” She has taken this quote from Punk Rock and German Crisis: Adaptation and Resistance after 1977 by Cyrus Shahan. This is the only book on punk that she references, and it is a selective quote. A significant theme in the Shahan book that Raza does not note is punk as a form of resistance to fascism and racism, and Shahan’s assertion that punk is frequently perceived as a movement for the marginalized. Regarding “Orientalism,” Raza explains that Edward Said “completely missed the second space or the second world.”
She seems to want to focus on other non-western colonial empires, specifically the Soviets. However, her selectiveness obscures a brutal history. The Soviets colonized parts of Central Asia and the Caucuses for over 70 years. The Ottoman Turks and the Russian Empire, which Raza briefly notes but does not examine, were destructive colonizers for centuries longer than the Soviets. This omission distorts the reality of the area and is a disservice to the people who still suffer from the effects of Turkish colonization.
Another problem is that the term Orientalism is not just geopolitical; it is also class-based. Cornell Professor Mostafa Minawi, author of Losing Istanbul: Arab-Ottoman Imperialists and the End of Empire, stated in an interview,
Taking concepts such as Said’s Orientalism as a blueprint and out its original context is dangerous. But if we look at Orientalism as a political concept, away from its Western colonial context, we can observe it in the Middle East in relation to class conflicts and as a tool of oppressing the masses.
The framework of Said’s Orientalism needs to be used as intended to explain oppression and class, and an expanded Orientalism must include all the colonizers of an area. Not that Raza’s book actually says much about punk or Orientalism.
It is unsurprising then that anti-fascism, class, and anti-racism are not a part of Punk Orientalism. In the United States, Raza’s first major undertaking as a curator was But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa, which debuted at the Guggenheim and was sponsored by Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) in 2016. Described by the New York Times as “blandly quasi-Minimalist,” it was most notable because half of the 20 participating artists protested the Guggenheim for the living and working conditions of laborers building the institution’s Abu Dhabi branch.
After this, Raza was awarded a three-year position as the UBS MAP curator for the Guggenheim. The UBS MAP Guggenheim art initiative ran from 2012 to 2018, roughly the same time that UBS was being investigated (and later fined billions) by five countries for fraud. Before this, Raza worked for some of the most autocratic governments in the Middle East, the Caucuses, and Central Asia. She elaborated in the Brooklyn Rail,
I was involved in the establishment and direction of several artists’ spaces in emerging cities, including Alaan Artspace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah, UAE, and YARAT Contemporary Art Space in Baku, Azerbaijan. While Maraya and Alaan received some governmental sponsorship, all three spaces were founded and primarily run by artists and offered studio space and professional support to emerging practitioners in cities where contemporary art was still a new vocabulary.
In Azerbaijan, Raza worked as the head of education and curator of the country’s government-run modern art center, YARAT. As detailed in this publication, Azerbaijan is one of the most brutal and racist regimes in the region and the world. Whereas Saudi Arabia has a Freedom House rating of 8, Azerbaijan has a rating of 1. Aida Mahmudova, niece of Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev, founded YARAT and runs the center. Leyla Aliyeva, the dictator’s daughter, was an artist in residence at YARAT for six months. Raza has conducted public forums with Mahmudova in Azerbaijan, UAE, and Europe; these talks enact a type of soft power that indirectly centers the fictitious idea of Azerbaijan as a secular, tolerant country. It seems implausible that Raza is unaware that the fascist government of Azerbaijan runs YARAT, despite her claims in the Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere. Autocratic regimes do not sponsor galleries because they love art; they do it to influence opinion. By working for these dictatorial countries’ governments, Raza is shielding her patrons from criticism and delegitimizing those who are opposing the regimes internally.
During Azerbaijan’s brutal 2020 invasion of the Republic of Artsakh, Raza commented on a now-deleted Instagram post: “Missing Baku all the way from the ancient to the modern.” The post hyped the Heydar Aliyev Center in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku. Heydar Aliyev was the former KGB chief of Azerbaijan, the country’s first dictator, and the current dictator’s father. He was also responsible for the foundations of Azerbaijani state-sponsored racism.
The country of Armenia is anathema to the ruling regime of Azerbaijan. Although Raza features some diaspora Armenian-made art in her Punk Orientalism curatorial project, none of these works are political or controversial, and there are no artists who were born and raised in the country of Soviet or Post-Soviet Armenia.
Other groups of artists are also missing. Where are the queer Arab artists in Raza’s work? Where are her Kurdish artists? Where are the Syrian artists in the areas being attacked by Turkey? Where are the ethnic minority artists from the region? Where are the artists who are fighting Russia’s current colonialization efforts? Where are the Palestinian artists? She works for Mana Contemporary Museum, founded by Israeli billionaire Moishe Mana; where are the Israeli artists who might address the Orientalism in their country? She could also include artists from Artsakh. That would show a visionary punk attitude by facing an Orientalist Azeri colonizer, which has recently opened what outsiders called an “Ethnic hatred theme park.” For example, Ani Shahverdyan, a ceramicist from Artsakh, whose civilian population is going through an active military-led genocide after nine months of a blockade, wrote in a message:
I feel desperate and lost being an Artsakhtsi artist. I refuse to make new plans because by doing it, I would accept that my future won’t be in Artsakh.
Where is art that displays overt social or political dissent? As the Sun City protests showed, abstaining from giving art to oppressive regimes can have results by bringing a spotlight to dark corners. Protesting regimes has consequences. The main targets of Azerbaijan or Saudi Arabia are pursued by assassins, while lesser ones are subject to frequent harassment.
At the very least, Sara Raza presents a dull and uneven Orientalist (in the correct sense of the word) fantasy of this part of the world. The reality is so much better and worse and more interesting. Her limited curatorial vision empowers dictators and diminishes artists who are making work that has political impact and carries risk. Emphasis on regional artists is important. Soviet colonization is a significant force to reckon with and explore. The region deserves a better representative.
Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion by Sara Raza (2022) is published by Black Dog Press and is available online and in bookstores.
