THE KÖKPAR UNIVERSE

Atabekov’s international success was matched with only moderate fame at home, and he exhibited abroad more often than at home. There were even rumors that Atabekov had emigrated, although he still lives in Shymkent. His range of subjects is quite broad, but the principal theme remains traditional steppe culture and its relationship to modernity and globalization.

Said Atabekov’s current exhibition in Almaty features two series of photographic portraits of kökpar players, ‘Steppe Wolves’ and ‘The Prayer of a Thousand Horsemen’. The latter title has also become the name of another project, a video in which the artist interviews the wives of athletes. The main piece of the exhibition is a large-scale installation called the Kazygurt Portal, which Atabekov assembled from objects in his collection related to the game or that he found on sports battlefields.

Since the early 2010s, he has been dedicating projects to kökpar. ‘It’s like a disease or a habit. If I don’t go to kökpar, I can’t sleep or eat,’ he said on the YouTube show Зamandas Outside. ‘[People] create their own designs; they sew their own clothes. There are different types of saddles. Each craftsman does it differently … I come there to see it all. There is nowhere to go in the city, but kökpar is like an exhibition.’ Through the game, Atabekov comes into contact with the broad esthetic and semantic space of national culture.

The history of the kökpar goes back centuries. It is often associated with hunting wolves (the name itself means ‘blue wolf’), which caused a lot of trouble for the nomads. Kökpar is a type of rugby played on horseback, a tough game in which riders fight over a goat carcass that must be thrown into the qazandyq (opponent’s goal). In the most modern version of the game, teams play with four players on each team, and a dummy is used as the projectile. Traditionally, kökpar was played on a jailau (summer highland pasture). The carcass had to be delivered to a predetermined location (for example, one’s village or home). Up to 1,000 riders could compete, both village against village and man against man. Competitions in this more severe and traumatic format are still held today in many places, including Shymkent.

Atabekov’s works are devoted to the old versions of kökpar. In ancient times, the game was also a training exercise for warriors. The great weight of the carcass and the high speed of movement developed a warrior’s endurance and hardened his will. Fighting on horseback and controlling the horse in almost combat conditions was great training for future battles. It was also an opportunity to test the personal qualities and training of both riders and horses.

The exhibition text explains that the photo series ‘Steppe Wolves’ (2010–2024) ‘reflects the unique combination of masculinity, distinctive style of dress, and confident demeanor’ of kökpar athletes. The athletes appear before the artist’s camera in the steppe as if detached from any context. But the horizontal format (four out of five photos), which is not the most common for portraits, suggests that viewers should pay attention to the way the character relates to space. There is almost no trace of the daily hustle and bustle in the photograph. It is swept away, and only the open steppe remains, the bare earth in the planetary sense. Its reflection is the vastness of the sky, which shields the anxious earthlings from the universal abyss. The only vertical counterpoint to this scale is the kökpar player himself. His brutal image becomes a statement of subjective will, and he is all compressed action. He faces the cosmos, but he is filled with determination not to be afraid of the difference in scale.

‘The Prayer of a Thousand Horsemen’ (2013–2023) captures kökpar players in a moment of prayer before a match. The upcoming competition keeps them focused. Risk and exposed nerves create the conditions for a confrontation with their own existence. Here, it takes the form of a prayer, an inner speech, as if the need to turn away from the space of everyday concerns and turn to the world and to oneself. But the subjectivity expressed in this series is combined with unity. If it is a team game, the unity is with one’s teammates. If it is an individual competition, the unity is with like-minded people of the kökpar culture, who have nourished its vitality for decades. The Thousand Horsemen are, of course, the ancient army. It is as if the spirits of the steppe warriors have moved into modern athletes. The tense faces express the mood of fighting to the death and not playing for fun. Atabekov, on the other hand, is known for his vivid anti-militarist stance, and it would be hard to imagine him extolling violence. The kökpar warriors mean something quite different, and the central installation of the exhibition will help you get closer to this meaning.

In the Kazygurt Portal (2024), everything is mixed up. Photos of elderly veterans of the game are next to children’s saddles on wheels and toy horses (the age range is very wide). A sweatshirt with a red five-pointed star is next to a saddle with a D&G logo (the logos of DKNY, Coca-Cola, and Lucky Strike can also be found here). The eras of the multi-brand consumer society, the Soviets, and perhaps even earlier times meet (some photos look quite old). The saddle, entirely covered in rhinestones, was clearly made for a girl, and the male and female also converge here. Battle-hardened horseshoes, boots, hats, and helmets, photo collages with kökpar being played in space and in Red Square, issues of the short-lived Kökpar Central Asia magazine, and finally horse bones and a skull; it seems that the project includes everything the human mind can imagine about the sport.

The artist adds large surfaces that pull the fragmentary installation together (two blankets, a flag, a carpet, a coarsely crumpled canvas with a painting in the spirit of abstract expressionism). The ornaments on the blanket and the carpet evoke eternity, the cosmic dimension. Abstract expressionism, always interested in the invisible structure of the world, intensifies these ornaments, and this is the key to the work. The Kazygurt Portal is the universe of kökpar, very deep into its spirit. The chaos of the exhibit’s various parts is reminiscent of the tumultuous pandemonium of athletes snatching a goat carcass from each other. The brutal esthetic of the installation corresponds to the harsh nature of the game. And its powerful relief (viewers should try to get as close as possible and look from the side of the installation) reflects the energy wave of the competition.

The image of the kökpar universe is complemented by the video The Prayer of a Thousand Horsemen (2024). The artist gives voice to the wives of kökpar players, who share the fate of their husbands, in many ways creating it but remaining in the shadows. The self-repeating nature of the title is important: it balances the soldiers of the front and the rear, the manifest and the hidden efforts.

The very theme of the exhibition poses a question to the viewer about the role of tradition and the past. On the one hand, dealing with the past is connected with the processing of historical traumas and the reconstruction of dangerous patterns that hinder development (for example, an exhibition of Gulnur Mukazhanova’s works is devoted to this theme). On the other hand, the past is an inexhaustible source of patterns and models for changes in the present. Ancestors who faced similar trials and responded differently now become, in the form of memory, protectors of the living from the unknown—and they may yet be clarifying, encouraging, or warning protectors. In moments of crisis, people continually dive into similar stages of the past to fish out the pearls of pattern and receive their support. They add to their own experience, understand what is happening more clearly, and have a better chance of responding appropriately. At the same time, it is never a question of restoration, but only of reassembly under new conditions. Tradition lives only in development and dies when it is mothballed.

The past always contains alternatives to the current order of things that can trigger the process of renewal. That is why totalitarian power usually tries to rewrite history according to its needs and suppress historical memory. This is exactly how the Bolsheviks acted, and not a single post-Soviet country seems to have fully recovered from this blow. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, each of these countries turned, to some extent, to national tradition, although naively conservative attempts at recreation often thwarted constructive attempts at reassembly.

When Atabekov delves into the tradition of kökpar, he finds a model of a strong-willed subject. The shadows of the ancient warriors seem to shine through the kökpar hero and strengthen him. He is not only a man on earth, but also the master of his land, responsible for its well-being. Full of dignity and self-respect, he is able to create reality in his space, to pray through action—indeed, the artist often says, ‘My work is my prayer.’

The preservation and development of the kökpar tradition in spite of the Soviet regime is a proof of its vitality. The artist is only the designer of the universe of the Kazygurt Portal. The universe itself is woven from the willful efforts of many people who directed their energy and abilities to the culture of kökpar, which in the project becomes a prototype of the culture in general and even of the country. The philosophical interpretation of this sport expressed by Rakat Zhaksybay comes to mind: ‘The epic Alpamys Batyr expresses the main idea of the game: you cannot leave your wounded warrior in the enemy’s hands.’

In tradition, Atabekov seeks an antidote for post-colonial traumas, complexes, and atomization of a nation divided by mistrust. The artist shows the viewer the hidden potential of Kazakh society if it can only unite. The epic story of the kökpar becomes a story of possibility—and a call to self-respect and belief in one’s own strength for fellow citizens who do not always find it easy.

The exhibition runs until 26 January 2025.