Churlu mamut biography

Born in Ferghana in the east of Uzbekistan in the year. In the spring of the year he forever moved to his homeland to Crimea. Mamut Churlu is one of the brightest representatives of the art scene of Crimea. He graduated from the Novosibirsk State Conservatory with a degree in a musicologist, as well as the art school in Ferghana with a degree in the artist-former. In the period from GO, he studied with the monumentalists Vasily Krylov and Yuri Sobimov.

He is engaged in easel, decorative and applied art and interiors in ethnic style. For 30 years he studied the ornament of kilim weaving and embroidery. Thanks to his research in the region, more attention began to be paid to Crimean Tatar art, including traditions of weaving.

And this year, the Crimean Tatar ornament as an element of the intangible cultural heritage of Ukraine was included in the preliminary list of UNESCO to include it in the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of mankind. Katerina Yakovlenko talked with the artist about his return to Crimea and the revival of fabric traditions in Crimea. Mamut Churlu. Remember how you made this decision then?

Mamut Churlu: when perestroika began, the information war against the Crimean Tatars intensified. The massive seething began, the rallies of the demonstration intensified, everything was in full swing. But then the opportunity was already opened and the people rushed into the Crimea. Before that, everyone who came to the Crimea was simply thrown off the peninsula, regardless of whether the person bought a house or did not buy.

At the end of X, it was already possible to come and buy at home. Because of this melody, my heart grabbed me, everything contracted inside. And I realized that I had to go to the Crimea. It was a year. This was the first time you were in the Crimea? For the first time I visited Crimea in the m year. I had a ticket from the Union of Artists of Uzbekistan to visit a creative group in a mini-text in the house of Korovin's work in Gurzuf.

I then engaged in textiles, made tapestries, all kinds of voluminous compositions, experimented a lot. In Crimea, I had to fly from Ferghana through Tashkent. When I came to the Ferghana airport for registration, I noticed that some tall old man is behind the cashier. Something immediately clicked inside me, I realized that this person is from the KGB. I went through registration safely.

But when he approached the plane, a policeman standing next to the stewardess turned to me and asked where I was flying. I replied: "To the Crimea." He blushed before my eyes like a tomato. He grabbed me and dragged me there, to this person at registration. He ordered me to pass a ticket. In Tashkent, I created a lot of noise about this. KGB officers called me to work in the artistic fund of the Union of Artists in Ferghana with a request to cancel my trip.

However, I flew out of Tashkent to Crimea without adventure. In Crimea, the following surprise awaited me: upon arrival in Simferopol, I noticed that in the arrival zone there are a number of military in general forms. Everyone who flew in, divided into “white” and “blacks”, that is, the Crimean Tatars were taken to some other door, and all the others were allowed to go out.

When I showed my documents, I explained where I was going, they let me through the door for the “whites”. On the way from the airport to Gurzuf, our bus was stopped several times. I noticed that there were some rags around and “quarantine” was written. I asked the locals what a quarantine. And they say that they jokingly called him a "disease of rabbits." That is, each car was stopped and checked whether Crimean Tatars were going there.

So I came to Gurzuf. In Gurzuf I was two months, I worked in an international group. For the first time I met Ukrainian artists there. Then he first visited the Khan Palace, saw samples of applied art, which were no worse than in Central Asia. What was the atmosphere and public moods around the Crimean Tatar issue then? In our house, there was a mass-stall, a man of years once he came and said that in the mountains they discovered a Tatar cart with weapons.

Like, the Tatars are so wild that they still go on the carts, and even with weapons! This is despite the fact that then there probably was only one Crimean Tatar on the whole south coast - me. The information company was then, as always, very negative. It was said throughout the city, not to leave the house, not to let out children. And the next day, even dogs did not bark.

“Informants” went home and said, they say, tomorrow they would cut you Tatars. But people lived in Tatar houses, they were afraid that the Tatars would really cut them. It was a year and I still did not think that I would return to the Crimea. After that trip, I began to engage in painting. Every day I took a tablet and went out to write. Then he finalized these paintings at home.

Everything was with me: paints, brushes, tablet, paper. And I am all these experiences: what happened to my people, with me, in my own skin, as they say, I experienced. This all resulted in such a rather brutal style of my painting. Painting provided me with the opportunity to express my internal state, attitude to the state, to people, to regime.Due to the fact that I was engaged in textiles, I knew how to stylize, simplify the shape, make it flat.

These were my paintings. I had the need to write and write just like that, I did not even think that someone would need these paintings. But when I was invited as a textile holder to organize an exhibition in the Russian theater in Tashkent, I suggested placing a series of my paintings in it. The exhibition was together with the works of sculptor Damir Ruzybaev.

In the space of his sculpture, and on the walls - my textiles and painting. After this exhibition, almost all my work was purchased. Among those who purchased, there was a collector who wanted to resell the work to the West, because at that time many were interested in the Soviet underground. That same summer, I met another galleryman - Tatyana Kolodsey, she also bought a lot of work from me, and later showed them in Moscow and abroad.

Let's get back to the year when you decided to return. Have you moved right away? At first I arrived for one month in Bakhchisarai. I needed to check if I could live and work in the Crimea. Indeed, for me it was an unknown territory, an unknown landscape. I wondered, can I write my paintings? But for a month of residence in Bakhchisarai, I wrote with a dozen works, a whole series.

So I was convinced that I could fully express my thoughts and feelings on this earth. After that, I returned to Ferghana and prepared for departure. Forever I left Ferghana on June 5th. And if I am not mistaken, on June 7, pogroms and murders of the Turks of the Meskhetians Ferghana, in Kokand, in villages began. The information was not distributed about this, and I learned about this already in the Crimea, June.

When I flew in, I flew almost nowhere. In Bakhchisarai, during a trial arrival, I met local artists, they allocated one old building opposite the railway station under the workshops. These guys allocated one of the rooms under the workshop. I had no money at that time, I took the funds from my sister. I thought that I would stay in Bakhchisarai and buy a house there. But it did not work out, and I moved to Simferopol, it was the capital.

There he fell into the whirlpool of events, there were ties with the Art Museum. The first summer I was arranged for a personal exhibition. I was immediately invited to make an exhibition in the Feodosia Gallery of Aivazovsky. I became a member of his reign. Already at the beginning of the x, we organized an exhibition of all Crimean Tatar artists, who were then only known.

They came from Uzbekistan.