ABOUT THE PROJECT
Living with Mountains offers a window onto life in the Kyrgyz village of Dobolu, a community of 2,500 residents in the Tian Shan Mountains—the "Mountains of Heaven".
The porject emerges from a collaboration between four scholar-artists—one Kyrgyz and three international researchers at the University of Central Asia—working in partnership with the Dobolu community and its museum director.
Through the integration of villagers’ voices, documentary photography, and autoethnographic reflections, the project offers both a nuanced portrait of a mountain community facing climate change and out-migration, and a meditation on the documentary process itself.
The project was featured as a collaborative multimedia installation at a regional gallery in Naryn as part of the Nomad 24: The Infinite Sky festival of film, culture, and ideas.
MULTIMEDIA
INSTALLATION
In 2024, the project came to life as a multimedia installation at AS Art Gallery in Naryn, as part of the Nomad 2024: The Infinite Sky festival. Spread across two rooms, the exhibition immersed visitors in the world of Dobolu. One room held large-scale moving portraits and landscape imagery from the fieldwork, surrounding visitors in the faces and terrain of the village. In the other, a living room table was set with the foods and beverages served by the inhabitants of the village typically offered to guests in Dobolu homes, placed in front of the yurt from the gallery's permanent collection. Visitors were invited to sit at the table and watch a photographic slideshow of everyday domestic life in Dobolu. Not as spectators, but as guests.
