Postcard from Bishkek

Jesse, Svetlana’s globetrotting friend from the States (who wiped the floor with me at ten-pin bowling), is on his way back home.  Typically, he’s chosen a route which is far from direct – taking in nine more countries, (if you count the airport transfers), and visiting the Baltic States and Finland en route.

He seems to be enjoying it, however.  Apparently, “Vilnius is alright; Riga is pretty cool; and Tallinn is Amazing!!!”

He took time out to drop us a line and send us some photos from Helsinki, the capital of Finland, where the temperature is distinctly cooler than he’s been used to – but not as cold as in Riga.

He told us about an exhibition that he saw there, a series of “Buddy Bears” – about 140 of them representing all the countries recognized by the United Nations, each two meters tall – painted by artists from different countries.  I must admit that it’s not the sort of exhibition that I would have gone to if I had been in Helsinki, (I would have been trotting off to see the neo-classic Town Hall, the dignified Presidential Palace, Senate Square and the Lutheran Cathedral … and so on – what makes you think I have been looking at my Berlitz Pocket Guide to the Cities of Europe?), but as it happened to be a street exhibition, in the open air, then I suppose I might well have stumbled upon it in the same way as he seems to have done.

The exhibition was first held in Berlin in 2002 and has now traveled around the world and has already visited all five continents.  More than twenty two million visitors have seen it and associated events have raised over one and a half million Euro for UNICEF and other local Children’s charities.

It was inspired by the motto:

“We have to get to know each other better …
… it makes us understand one another better,
trust each other more, and live together more peacefully”

and the 140 United Buddy Bears symbolically stand hand in hand in a peaceful circle, “promoting tolerance and under-standing among different nations, cultures and religions”.  Each of the bears was given to an artist from a different country to decorate.  There are some quite striking designs, which you can see on their website.

The Kyrgyz Bear in Helsinki was decorated by Yuristanbek Shigaev, who studied in St Petersburg but is now a professor and Head of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, at the Kyrgyz State University for Architecture, Transport and Construction.  (To be honest, it’s the first time that I have heard of that University – but Bishkek is teeming with institutes of Higher Education, and Kyrgyzstan is supposed to have one of the world’s highest ratios of graduates to the population.)

Shigaev took his bear and chose to paint on it triangles to represent the mountains of Kyrgyzstan – whilst the white bear represents the snow lying on the mountaintops.  He also included fragments from some of his paintings, such as a representation of  Ak-Kula, the snow white horse of Manas, the legendary hero of the Kyrgyz who united the nation.

The exhibition has already been staged some 21 times and visited some 17 cities: Berlin, (five times – in 2002, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2010), Kitzbuhel, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, Vienna, Cairo, Jerusalem, Warsaw, Stuttgart, Pyongyang, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Astana … and now Helsinki.  There have also been twenty exhibitions of “Mini Bears” staged over the years around Germany.

I’m not sure if they will ever get to Bishkek, but we do have a wide variety of exhibitions – including a number of similar visiting international exhibitions – sometimes in galleries, and sometimes out of doors.

Tags: Expat, Kyrgyzstan