Middle East & Africa

Erbossyn Meldibekov

Game (Six Pieces)

2017

Game (Six Pieces), 2017

Game (Six Pieces) by Erbossyn Meldibekov is inspired by the popular Rubik’s cube puzzle and is composed of three colors (red, green and white) instead of six, referencing the colors of the Afghan flag. The work provides a revisionist interpretation of the legacy of The Great Game (the original 19th-century standoff between Russian and British empires over Afghanistan), and Afghanistan’s position as a centerpiece of the longstanding War on Terror, (the military campaign led by the United States and their allies against organizations and regimes they identified as terrorists after 9/11). Game (Six Pieces) mobilizes dark humor and irony to illustrate the complex and unstable relationships between communism, Islam, and American and British imperialism.

Through drawing, installation, painting, photography, and video, Erbossyn Meldibekov’s practice examines architecture, monumentality, and value systems in the public domain. Meldibekov’s work critiques the role of visual culture in the dissemination of power in Post-Soviet Central Asia, following the region’s independence from Russian imperialism in 1991. His practice reveals the region’s complex position, which exists at the intersection of Stalin’s totalitarian regime, the shadow of its epic past, and the ongoing legacy of The Great Game, implicating neighboring Afghanistan’s historical and current role in the stability of the region.

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Erbossyn Meldibekov Game (Six Pieces)

Erbossyn Meldibekov

Game (Six Pieces)