42.6729165, 47.7314644, 2023

Inkjet printon photographic archival paper

This photograph depicts a concrete sculpture resting on a hill in Dagestan facing the Caspian Sea.
Titled after the coordinates of its photographed location, the object was placed at this site by the
artist in September 2023 after the completion of her film ЦIумихъ. The concrete sculpture first ap-
peared in the film as a plinth upon which copies of Rasul Gamzatov’s book My Dagestan are placed.
Later, the sculpture is seen as the last standing object in a landscape of vast mountains, resting

on a platform that resembles a sheet of A4 paper. Weighing 54 kilograms, the block holds withinit a bronze-cast bust of the artist’s great grandfather Gamzat Tsadasa, a scholar and writer who
belonged to the firstgeneration of public figures in Dagestan to be memorialised in this manner. After his death, he was
buried under his monument in the centre of Makhachkala. Encasing the bronze bust is another
molded plaster bust of the artist’s grandfather, Rasul Gamzatov. Gamzatov belonged to a generation
of poets whose images were reproduced and disseminated across the country. The two busts have
been encased inside a concrete block whose dimensions match those of the head and shoulders of
Patimat Gamzatova, the daughter of Rasul Gamzatov, and the mother of Taus Makhacheva.

This work draws on a range of histories and monuments including Amina Menia’s 2012 work titled
Enclosed revisiting a monument in Algeirs that contains within it another. The layering of histories
is always at once an enshrinement and a concealment, a protection and an erasure, a remembrance
and a refusal. For Makhacheva, the reiterative acts of making the sculpture, presenting it in a film,
placing it near her ancestral home, and capturing it in a photograph, all arise from a phrase she
once heard when being introduced to someone: “Расулил ясалъул яс” (Rasulil yasalhul yas – Avar
for ‘the daughter of the daughter of Rasul [Gamzatov]).

Print: Piranesi Lab | Arkady Andreev, Nikon Filippov, Alexandra Koroleva, Alexey Veselovsky
Design: Tata Osipova
Production: Kristina Chernyavskaya, Andrey Efits, Daria Pokrass
Research: Kristina Chernyavskaya, Andrey Efits
Commissioned by Shaltai Editions Courtesy of the artist and Shaltai Editions
Photo: Ivan Anisimov
Commissioned by Shaltai Editions
Courtesy of the artist and Shaltai Editions
Photography and colour grading: Anastasia Ivanova
Production: Veronika Smirnova
Production Support: Musagadzhiev Gadzhi, Musagadzhiev Magomed

Sculptor: Shamil Ahmed
Bronze Casting: Dmitriy Moiseev, Petr Moiseev
Patination: Borovikov Vladimir
Production: Marina Chashnik, Sasha Kovaleva

Amal Avezdzhanova,

Alexandra Kuznetsova, Veronika Smirnova

Production Support:

Sharjah Art Foundation Production Grant, Canal Projects

Courtesy of the artist

Site under construction. Contact: info@tausmakhacheva.com