TENT OF IMAGINATION: A WEEK BETWEEN THEM
Denis Davydov
2024-2025
I remember men like these from my childhood in Uzbekistan - in the mahallas of Tashkent, in villages, along roads. Elderly men in dark suits, an image so familiar that it became part of my memory of the place itself.
Years later, I encountered two of them sitting on a bench outside a business centre, seemingly caught in a pause on their way somewhere else. One wore a doppa, the other a New York cap. One of them was praying, ending with the familiar movement of his hands across his face.
The image seemed to return from memory, almost intact but slightly displaced. The dark suit had once arrived in Central Asia as part of a larger project of modernity. By then, that history had long dissolved into everyday life, absorbed into bodies, habits and gestures carrying other histories at the same time.
A week later, I encountered two young men selling produce at a market. This time they actually were twins.
I did not photograph them. I simply walked away with the feeling that something had repeated itself. Two older men who appeared to be doubles, followed by two young men who really were. There was no cosmic meaning to it, but there was an unmistakable rhyme.
Later, away from Tashkent, the encounters began to merge. The twins themselves became increasingly difficult to recall. Their faces dissolved into other memories, paintings, illustrations and figures from Usto Mumin. Observation slowly acquired the structure of a parable.
Years later, I encountered two of them sitting on a bench outside a business centre, seemingly caught in a pause on their way somewhere else. One wore a doppa, the other a New York cap. One of them was praying, ending with the familiar movement of his hands across his face.
The image seemed to return from memory, almost intact but slightly displaced. The dark suit had once arrived in Central Asia as part of a larger project of modernity. By then, that history had long dissolved into everyday life, absorbed into bodies, habits and gestures carrying other histories at the same time.
A week later, I encountered two young men selling produce at a market. This time they actually were twins.
I did not photograph them. I simply walked away with the feeling that something had repeated itself. Two older men who appeared to be doubles, followed by two young men who really were. There was no cosmic meaning to it, but there was an unmistakable rhyme.
Later, away from Tashkent, the encounters began to merge. The twins themselves became increasingly difficult to recall. Their faces dissolved into other memories, paintings, illustrations and figures from Usto Mumin. Observation slowly acquired the structure of a parable.
Many of my characters begin this way, as found persons. Someone appears before I understand why I need to remember them. Sometimes a photograph remains, sometimes only the residue of an encounter. In reconstructing them as digital figures, biography gradually recedes while gesture, surface and memory become more pronounced.
The living person disappears, but what he carried remains - a kind of involuntary archive.
The living person disappears, but what he carried remains - a kind of involuntary archive.
The work takes the form of a two-channel installation. At first, the two frames seem to contain separate realities. Movements mirror, repeat and interrupt one another, falling out of sync or returning with a delay. Gradually, the separation becomes unstable. The older and younger figures begin to cross between screens, appearing within each other’s spaces and moments.
Their encounters bring together fragments of Central Asian visual culture, khushtaks, screens and other elements of an artificial scenography. Certain combinations approach the transcendent or the esoteric without settling into either. I prefer to keep this possibility unresolved.
The work emerged from a coincidence, and perhaps it continues to circle around the peculiar moment when coincidence begins to feel like a pattern.
Their encounters bring together fragments of Central Asian visual culture, khushtaks, screens and other elements of an artificial scenography. Certain combinations approach the transcendent or the esoteric without settling into either. I prefer to keep this possibility unresolved.
The work emerged from a coincidence, and perhaps it continues to circle around the peculiar moment when coincidence begins to feel like a pattern.
Pattern itself carries a particular resonance in the visual culture of Central Asia. Within Islamic decorative traditions, repetition rarely leads towards a single image or conclusion. A form multiplies, returns and transforms, suggesting a structure that could potentially continue beyond the limits of its frame. Repetition becomes a way of approaching the infinite without representing it.
The contemporary image exists within a very different regime of repetition - feeds, loops, copies, predictions and algorithmic circulation. I am interested in the distance between these two conditions. One allows repetition to open beyond the image; the other seems capable of producing images without end.
Somewhere between them sits the small, accidental recurrence from which the work began.
The contemporary image exists within a very different regime of repetition - feeds, loops, copies, predictions and algorithmic circulation. I am interested in the distance between these two conditions. One allows repetition to open beyond the image; the other seems capable of producing images without end.
Somewhere between them sits the small, accidental recurrence from which the work began.
Project team
CG visualisation and animation:
Konstantin Gromov, Eugeniy Padalkin
Video Editing: Danya Smirnov
Sound: Farhad Farzali
Konstantin Gromov, Eugeniy Padalkin
Video Editing: Danya Smirnov
Sound: Farhad Farzali