Unsettled by Doug Woods and Aissulu Kadyrzhanova
“Unsettled” is a floor and wall painting installationdeveloped by mural artists Doug Woods and Aissulu Kadyrzhanova in collaborationwith four performance artists: Asimina Cremos, Shizu Homma, Jungwoong Kim, and thecollective Body Dreamz.
“Unsettled” is an endeavor to understand“nomadism”- a transient culture without fixed habitation. The artists areinspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s idea that a nomadic knowledge and identity can serveas a strategy for survival under capitalism. The space of the nomad, the desertand the steppe, is free from the forces of institutionalization, and in thisway a metaphor for types of occupation which resist the state’s politicalrestrictions.
For Woods and Kadyrzhanova, aconcept of nomadism is of a particular interest as both of their culturalheritages take root in the nomadic way of life. Woods was born in rural Kansasin a Mennonite farming community. Mennonites are a pastoral nomadic culture ofPrussian descent, emphasizing adult baptism andrejecting church organization, military service, and public office. Kadyrzhanova was born andraised in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Historically, Kazakhstan has been a zone of themost ancient and largest territorial nomadic culture. The Kazakhs’ nomadictribal society suffered frequent incursions by the Russian Empire, ultimately succumbingto colonization in 1700s. In 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstanbecame an independent nation.
Kadyrzhanova and Woods envision their muralinstallation as a sanctuary of multi-directionality and integration, informed by the spacepractices of nomads. The floor mural incorporates four rudimentary blackand white tile patterns. Combined, this set of patterns creates secondarypatterns with almost limitless design possibilities, alluding to the manydifferent paths that life on a road can take us. The floor piece has no beginningor end: the borders are open and invite a possibility to add rows in anydirection. In contrast to the geometrically patterned floor mural, the blackand white wall drawings embrace free gestural brushstrokes, depicting two monumentalephemeral profiles. The heads refer to the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus andEurydice, a story that draws from the Voyage and Return archetype. The Voyage and Returnprotagonists go on a journey of exploration, searching for a strange new world,and eventually return home with new knowledge.