Adherents of Islam and Christianity have been living in Russia for many centuries. They live in peace and harmony, supporting each other and contributing to harmony and peace in society. This harmony and mutual understanding have long been a trademark of the Republic of Tatarstan. Therefore, it is not surprising that it was in Kazan, at the Museum of History and Statehood, that an exhibition of artworks of the Raifa Art Festival ‘Juxtaposition of Cultures’ was opened.
The exhibition features more than 40 artworks created by the festival participants and united by universal ideas of love, compassion and mercy, which are the main spiritual values for Orthodox and Muslim cultures of Tatarstan.
The participants of the 2021 festival were artists from Udmurtia, Mari El, Moscow, St Petersburg, Naberezhnye Chelny and Kazan, as well as creatively gifted people with disabilities from Tatarstan. The results of their artistic research each artist displayed on two canvases that symbolically denote two worlds – Christian and Islamic. The works of each artist are united in a diptych, which symbolizes inextricable link between cultures and their common source, their common beginning.
According to one of the project participants, artist Alfiya Ilyasova, the major event of the Raifa Art Festival ‘Juxtaposition of Cultures’ is a laboratory, a study of commonality of Islamic and Christian cultures, which are fundamental for Tatarstan.
‘We initiated the festival in 2019, and in 2020 it took place for the first time and brought together 23 artists from all over Russia. For a fortnight we studied the spiritual and cultural heritage of Tatarstan: we visited museums, the Kazan Kremlin, the city of Bolgar, talked to clerics and mentors. As a result, we created such visual content from the works, which consist of two parts – Christian and Islamic,’ Alfiya Ilyasova said.
It is with her work that the exhibition begins – the artist presented the angel Jibreel (Gabriel in Orthodoxy) and showed how the same character is seen through the prism of culture in Islam and Christianity.
‘Generally speaking, this topic is new, the project is unique. There has never been such a thing in Russia before. We faced a complicated task. We talk a lot about the commonality of the cultures, but where it is, this commonality, and how to see it. This is what we tried to show through our works. In the process of research, it became clear what we all had in common, between Islam and Orthodoxy, what was of prime importance for us. And this is love. It is love that is the foundation of all spiritual cultures. This is the reason why our second festival was held under the motto ‘Love and mercy as a common thing in spiritual cultures,’ the festival participant said.
It is noteworthy that the festival is not just about creating pictures, but also has great social significance. In the process of preparing their works, the participants began to communicate with different segments of society – people with disabilities and those who found themselves in difficult life situations. Thus, the artists visited the Rehabilitation Centre at the Raifa Temple and the Yardam Charity Foundation, communicated with children a lot and conducted a few master classes. All this shows that nowadays artists go beyond their workshops and become conduits that our society badly needs.
Alfiya Ilyasova herself has been involved in Islamic mythology for 30 years and even published a book, ‘Images of Islamic Mythology’, in 2018, featuring her series of drawings and paintings. According to her, she first entered this world in the 1990s, when she had read the Quran and the Bible and understood that both sacred texts came from the same source.
‘When I presented a work on Maryam at one of my exhibitions, some viewers got surprised by the fact that Maryam in Orthodoxy and Maryam in Islam was the same character. At that moment I realized that it is necessary to talk about it, about our commonality, because we have much more in common than we have differences. And if you pay attention to our works presented within the exhibition, you can also see common features – common colors, similar elements. This exposition has become a kind of textbook, which was useful for the artists themselves,’ Ilyasova said.
Ilmira Gafiyatullina
