2 days ago
Turkistan – Crown Jewel of Central Asia's culture and religion
Turkistan – the city that lies in the hot, dry steppe of southwestern Kazakhstan. This ancient place of caravan sarays on the Silk Road, holy to the Muslims, attracts over a million visitors every year. Some of them come as pilgrims, to pay respects to the holy teacher Hoja Ahmad Jasawi, who wrote religious verses and taught disciples in the 12 the century. Some come simply to admire the old architecture and archeological treasures around. All of them flock, as by some kind of gravity, at the magnificent, awe-inspiring mausoleum built by Turco-Mongol conqueror and the founder of the Timurid Empire, Tamberlaine the Great.
With its richly decorated blue-tile façade and imposing domes, the mausoleum is both the place of prayer and a tourist attraction. It is included in the UNESCO's list of cultural heritage.
But the city is not just a place of history and religion. It offers many modern day attractions for tourists and one can enjoy ethno streets and engage in old crafts and martial arts, fly over Kazakhstan in the seat of the flying theater, visit museums or a great park. A modern park recreating oasis resting place for caravans offers shopping and an evening show on water. With Kazakhstan government making an effort to make the city more accessible by rail or air travel, one should definitely think about putting this place on the travel agenda.
Günther Uecker, one of the most iconic and influential figures in post-war German art, has died at the age of 95.
He was known around the world for his hypnotic nail reliefs - extraordinary textured surfaces created by hammering thousands of carpenter's nails into everyday objects like chairs, pianos, tree trunks, sewing machines, and canvases.
His family confirmed he died at the university hospital in his hometown of Düsseldorf in western Germany on Tuesday night. They did not give a cause of death.
Born in 1930 in the small Baltic village of Wendorf, the son of a farmer, Uecker rose to international fame from humble beginnings. After relocating to Düsseldorf in the 1950s, he studied and later taught at the city's revered art academy. He soon became part of the ZERO group, a radical post-war collective focused on light, movement, and purity in art.
In 1956, inspired by Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's belief that 'poetry is made with a hammer,' Uecker began hammering nails into canvases, chairs, and spinning disks. His early kinetic pieces created clattering soundscapes and optical effects that blurred the line between painting, sculpture, and performance.
Uecker once rode a camel through the hallowed halls of the Düsseldorf Academy in a surreal 1978 art intervention, and in 1968, alongside fellow artist Gerhard Richter, famously "occupied" the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, their protest culminating in a kiss in front of the press.
But beneath the playfulness ran a deep moral current. Uecker traveled the world with messages of peace, often creating works in countries under dictatorship or censorship. After the Chernobyl disaster, he painted using ash. He exhibited banners bearing messages of human rights in Beijing, and in a haunting series, painted words of violence -Verletzungswörter - in languages from around the globe.
Despite international fame (his works now command over €1 million and appear at top galleries and fairs), Uecker retained an anti-establishment spirit. 'Don't join the establishment,' he told Apollo magazine in a late interview.
In recent years, renewed global interest in the ZERO group, including a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014, brought his work to new audiences.
