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Item: Peak Communism

2009

Installation, 5 x (50 x 115 x 40 cm), 5 x (35 cm).
Materials: wood, iron

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK007724).

Erbossyn Meldibekov’s installation Peak Communism of 2009 is a parody on the utopian aspirations of the former Soviet leaders and the proceeding of history. A series of enameled metal pots for home use are turned upside-down and reformed into a mountainous landscape. The image alludes to the central mountain peak in the Pamir Mountains; the pot on the left presents the moment it was simply called Garma (‘mountain’), beside that the moment is presented it was named after Stalin, since it was the highest peak in the USSR, in the centre it is looming as ‘Peak Communism’, as it was renamed after 1952, at the right of that in its present remodeling, being now named after the nationalist hero Ismoil Simoni, and at the far right in an open end without any name. By transforming a mundane object of everyday use into a symbol of state ideology, Meldibekov expresses an ironic view on ideology as being nothing more than an empty mould. In the adjoining documentary photos Meldibekov shows how the numerous ‘heroic’ monuments throughout the region have been effectively remodeled over the past years.