OLYA ZOVSKAYA
Project about Shushi/a (working title)
In the ongoing Project about Shushi/a (working title), I investigate historiographical speculations and revisionism that are used in the construction of national_istic ideological narratives and instrumentalized by regional powers and nationalist groups in the South Caucasus as a ground and justification for ethnic-based hate, territorial claims, and military aggression.
The project departs from both – the personal experience of my family, who was displaced from the town of Shushi in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh during the 2020 war, and from this town itself, which due to its symbolic and strategic significance became a mirror for over a century-long conflictual processes in the region. In this contest, the history of Shushi became an object of historiographical speculations and revisionism, and its architecture and urban space – while being a subject of physical destructions and rearrangements – have been instrumentalized in these constructed narratives, providing them a tangible ground. In the construction of ideological narratives, architecture and urban space of the town simultaneously serve as a sufficient backdrop for promoted narratives; a physical mirror of political processes in the region; and an instrumentalized object in manipulations with history, both – physical and historiographical. Along with studying ideological constructions, I explore the role of the built environment and its meanings for personal memories and experiences of the former residents of the town and juxtapose them to ideological narratives, exploring their capability to resist and deconstruct such narratives.
The card on the photo says: “SOME interconnection problems in the architecture of the peoples of Transcaucasia. / B.m. and g. /
18 p. with ill. 25cm./ Tidings Azerb. branch Acad. science USSR #7, 1942/
On t.l: L. Bretanickiy, G. El’kin, L. Mamikonov and D. Motic”
The book title reveals the existence of cultural interconnection between peoples of the region that in 1942nd (the year of publishing) had not yet been rejected and erased by the historiographical revisionism of the later period. It also shows Russia’s colonial approach to the region — “Transcaucasia” is a name for the South Caucasus region used by the Russian Empire and USSR that is continuously used by Russian Federation officials today and refers to this region as something located “behind the Caucasus” if to count from a Russia-centered standing point.
