2022

Denis Davydov

The Others Will Join

Ongoing series of animated digital sculptures NFT.

The Others Will Join is a new series of digital sculptures by Denis Davydov, which develops the plot of retroactive nostalgia for the rapidly dissolving image of national cultures, first of all of Uzbek, Azerbaijani and Tajik ones. Davydov is interested in the encounter and conflict of the cultural codes of the twentieth century and crafts tradition with new media and Western culture. Dancing lively to Western hits, Davydov's characters once again bring us back to the issue of the end of the twentieth-century epoch. An integral part of the series, the music was recorded using both modern and national instruments in collaboration with the Azerbaijani artist and musician Farhad Farzali.

Denis Davydov and Farhad Farzali. Rast/ Shushter/ Orta Mahur
From the series The Others Will Join. 2021-2022
Edition of 5 + 2AP. Computer-generated image NFT
Unique sound for each edition
Courtesy of the Artist

At the same time, Davydov crawls into the territory of investigating everyday routine and the mundanity of human life. An essential part of an Uzbek, Azerbaijani and Tajik Soviet apartment interior, this type of small-size porcelain figurines not only created an obvious comfort due to their naive sweetness—they also manifested the symbolical presence of a particular ideology in the individual’s private space. In the artist’s view, this is what actively differs twentieth-century Soviet national decorative and applied sculpture from Western analogues (puppies, kitties, garden gnomes, Michael Jacksons, etc.): representing philistine happiness and well-being, back in the day these children's toys and vulgar figures were critiqued ironically by Jeff Koons, who “blew them up” to the scale of public art.

“The demand to which antiques respond is the demand for definitive or fully realized being. The tense of the mythological object isthe perfect: it is that which occurs in the present as having occurred in a former time, hence that which is founded upon itself, that which is ‘authentic.’ The antique is always, in the strongest sense of the term, a ‘family portrait’: the immemorialization, in the concrete form of an object, of a former being—a procedure equivalent, in the register of the imaginary, to a suppression of time.”

Conceived by the artist as a nomadic series, The Others Will Join embodies the possibility for adaptation to a geographical and cultural context. Depending on the place where the works are exhibited, the music to which the protagonists of the series dance changes, which is somewhat a response to the logic of TikTok trends visual or audio templates, to which young people across the globe record their mini-clips. The context thus becomes the artist’s co-author, once again questioning the channels via which culture is broadcast today and what it absorbs and abandons in the process.

At the same time, the series is an intense exploration of the subject of memory, with which the objective world is inextricably linked, as Jean Baudrillard accurately wrote about back in his time:

On the one hand, Davydov and Farzali realize their childhood dream in an intentionally naïve fashion by bringing to life the static objects that once surrounded them. On the other, they make an attempt to adapt artifacts of the remote past to metaverses that are rapidly gaining in importance today. This is also the aim of the musical soundtrack specially composed by Farzali for this series; it is played by traditional Azerbaijani instruments, including the tar, the kamancheh, the oud and the qanun. The mughams or modes of Azerbaijani folk music are reflected in the titles of the works in this series.

Denis Davydov and Farhad Farzali. Mahur-Hindi
From the series The Others Will Join. 2021-2022
Edition of 5 + 2AP. Computer-generated image NFT
Unique sound for each edition
Courtesy of the Artist

The sculptures Rast / Shushter / Orta Mahur are inextricably linked to the family histories of Davydov and Farzali and the material world that surrounded both artists from childhood. At the symbolic level, Davydov and Farzali tried to explore the interconnections between Central Asian culture and the so-called Western world and their present-day repercussions. The inspiration for creating these digital sculptures came from traditional statuettes: a clay Uzbek dragon from Farhad Farzali’s native home in Baku and a porcelain girl that stood on a shelf in Denis Davydov’s flat in Tashkent.

While preserving all the chips and defects of their prototypes, the figures have recognizable attributes of modernity: the ornament on the girl’s face seem to be taken from a Met Gala red carpet, while the flowers in her hairdo are inspired by the fashion photographs of youth on the pages of the young and wild magazine King Kong. The time indicators emphasize the connection between the currently romanticized past and the turbulent present.

Preserving the chips and cracks of his original childhood statuette, Davydov nevertheless manages to transform the porcelain figurine of the girl by giving her makeup that seems to be inspired by the characters of the popular TV series Euphoria as well as fashionable super-long nails. While all the female characters of the series The Others Will Join are based on the same porcelain statuette, the artist gives each of them a different personality by using the markers of various contemporary youth subcultures. The titles of works in the series refers to different mughams or modes of Azerbaijani folk music. For each work, Farzali composed a unique musical theme that is played by his musician friends on traditional Azerbaijani instruments such as the tar, the kamancheh, the oud and the qanun.

Denis Davydov and Farhad Farzali. misha_noname
From the series The Others Will Join. 2021-2022
Edition of 5 + 2AP. Computer-generated image NFT
Unique sound for each edition
Courtesy of the Artist

A small clay sculpture of a Tajik dragon that formerly stood on a shelf in Farzali’s native home in Baku comes to life next to a petrified porcelain girl. For the artists, bringing a statuette to life is tantamount to reviving the cultural language of the ‘East’ within so-called ‘metaverses.’ Such an intentionally simple and even naïve semantic somersault aims to strike a balance between Western and Eastern cultures in the space of the new digital reality.

Exploring the latest trends of youth culture, Denis Davydov’s work draws a parallel between the romanticized Soviet childhood of previous generations and the life of different members of the new generation. The prototype for the ‘misha_noname’ NFT was a porcelain boy that Davydov brought to life for this metaverse by connecting it with a photo of an unhappy Soviet girl forced to participate in an outdoor festival.

The exploration of the rebel spirit that has always been a constituent part of youth cultures all over the world is supported by the musical soundtrack that was specially composed by Farhad Farzali for this work. Inspired by Soviet post-punk, Farzali’s music refers to the famous post-Soviet period of development of the Leningrad underground representing a new age of freedom.

In ‘Mahur-Hindi,’ Denis Davydov and Farhad Farzali continue to explore the problem of the interaction between ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ cultures that has preoccupied both of them in recent years. They connect the symbols of their childhoods spent in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, respectively, with the recognizable attributes of the turbulent present day.

Denis Davydov and Farhad Farzali. C.Girl My Tracks
From the series The Others Will Join. 2021-2022
Edition of 5 + 2AP. Computer-generated image NFT
Unique sound for each edition
Courtesy of the Artist

The prototype for the work was a porcelain figurine of a girl from the artist’s childhood in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Bringing his heroine to life, Davydov gives her the recognizable attributes of modernity. The Chanel logo on the girl seems counterfeit and thus serves as an indicator of time rather than a brand name. The girl’s pink-colored hair and facial piercing also directly refer to the youngest and most fashionable means of self-expression around today.

The prototype of the works of the P.Boy series was a porcelain statuette of a soccer player from Davydov’s native home in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Playing with the figurine in metaspace, the artist puts the logo of a well-known brand on its chest, overturning the traditional perception of Soviet sport uniforms. The addition of recognizable modern attributes such as the brand name and fashionable eyeglasses emphasizes the continuity of generations while challenging habitual notions, leading to a broad range of associations. Davydov turns the Soviet soccer player into a golden youth or rich boy dancing in the style of TikTok clips.

Denis Davydov and Farhad Farzali.
P.Boy 017 Danger 100/ P.Boy 019 Owl'Hood 100
From the series The Others Will Join. 2021-2022
Edition of 5 + 2AP. Computer-generated image NFT
Unique sound for each edition
Courtesy of the Artist

The music for P.Boy figurines was specially composed by Farhad Farzali, a multidisciplinary artist living between Dubai, Berlin and Baku. Farzali wrote the soundtrack with the Roland M-DC1 module that has become an icon of the music industry. The samples installed on this cult machine of the 1990s have been used by such well-known American rappers as Nelly, Missy Elliott and Dr. Dre. Davydov and Farzaliev’s return to the sources and roots of contemporary trends furthers the understanding of the latter’s origins as well as sketching the contours of our future reality – the space of metaverses.

Project team

CG visualisation and animation: Konstantin Gromov
Sound: Farhad Farzali
Tech support: Kirill Kudryavtsev
Art consultant: Andrey Misiano
Project coordinator: Amalia Tumasova