42.6729165, 47.7314644

Inkjet printon photographic archival paper


2023









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 theartist 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 whobelonged 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 generationof 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 historiesis always at once an enshrinement and a concealment, a protection and an erasure, a remembranceand 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 sheonce heard when being introduced to someone: “Расулил ясалъул яс” (Rasulil yasalhul yas – Avarfor ‘the daughter of the daughter of Rasul [Gamzatov]).

Team

Print

Design

Production

Research  

Photo

Photography and colour grading                    
Production

Production Support

Sculpture production 


Sculptor

Bronze Casting

Patination

Production

Taus Makhacheva Studio

Production Support



Piranesi Lab | Arkady Andreev, Nikon Filippov, Alexandra Koroleva, Alexey Veselovsky,  Tata Osipova, 
Kristina Chernyavskaya, Andrey Efits, Daria Pokrass

Jamilya Valieva

Kristina Chernyavskaya, Andrey Efits

Ivan Anisimov

Anastasia Ivanova

Veronika Smirnova

Musagadzhiev Gadzhi, Musagadzhiev Magomed



Shamil Ahmed

Dmitriy Moiseev, Petr Moiseev

Borovikov Vladimir

Marina Chashnik, Sasha Kovaleva

Amal Avezdzhanova, Alexandra Kuznetsova, Veronika Smirnova

Sharjah Art Foundation Production Grant, Canal Projects        



Commissioned by Shaltai Editions 
Courtesy of the artist and Shaltai Editions

Production Support: Sharjah Art Foundation Production Grant, Canal Projects
Courtesy of the artist



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