Her Labor is part of Vleeshal’s International Nomadic Program 2024-2025 Repetition is a Form of Changing organized by League of Tenders.

Departing from the outdated notion that embroidery, tapestry making, and working with fabrics are primarily women's domains, both in Western contemporary art and non-Western art scene, Her Labor explored the works of five women artists whose practices encompass various forms of the so-called ‘arts and crafts.’ Hailing from diverse regions, including Central Asia, the Idel-Ural, and the North Caucasus, these artists engage with practices such as embroidery, tapestry, felting, and studying the ornaments of national dress and fabrics in a liberating manner. Her Labor continued the discussions started during the Her Gaze program.

As decolonial researcher and thinker Madina Tlostanova highlighted in the text Decolonial Aesthesis and the Post-Soviet Art: “Decolonial artists strive to restore human dignity by reclaiming memories and stories, as well as reviving and reimagining native cultures in tension with Soviet, post-Soviet, national and global neoliberal modernities.” Beyond the joy of creating something tangible and beautiful, such work can connect women*, non-verbally transmit knowledge through generations, narrate histories from female perspectives, and resist both authoritarian regimes and capitalist appropriation. During four non-public meetings, League of Tenders mediated the discussion around artistic methods of “working with wounds of the past not against it” (as Leslie C. Sotomayor points out in The Practice of Feminist Art Education), the privilege of intergenerational dialogue, the stigma of ‘decorative’, ‘touristic’ and ‘exotic’ which surrounds this labor and the ways of imagining different futures together. These non-public meetings — where participants openly shared their experiences, became vulnerable, and entered into each other’s world of sense and place — will be visible soon through an online publication in Ruyò Magazine (in English). It will summarize the main insights of the discussions and present these to a wider audience. The text will also be available in the native languages of the participants — Kazakh (Qazaq), Udmurt, Bashqort, Uzbek and Circassian.

Her Labor is part of the first season entitled Her Right, devoted to decolonial approaches to feminism and questioning it from non-Western perspectives. In Her Right League of Tenders revisits the immersive exhibition International Feminist Art that was on display in Vleeshal in 1980 and which, despite proclaiming to present artists who ‘emerged in many places around the world’, focused on the Western art scene.

Participants:

Milyausha Abaydullina is an artist, visual researcher and weaving master born in the Miyakin area, Bashqortostan, Urals. She graduated from the arts and graphics faculty of Bashqort State Pedagogical University named after Miftahedtdin Aqmulla. Her artistic practice is inspired by Bashqort's traditional arts and crafts, especially weaving. She is a participant in many exhibitions and forums dedicated to carpet weaving in Bashqortostan, Udmurt Republic and Qazaqstan. She is actively sharing her findings through public channels such as ‘Bashqort.photomuseum’ and ‘Genghis Khan's tear’.

Darali Leli is a writer, artist, fashion designer, curator and founder of Udmurt dress museum. She is based in Izhevsk, Udmurt Republic, and comes from a family of Udmurt writers. In her artistic practice, she focuses on traditional crafts: patchwork, weaving, embroidery and folk cut. Actively researching and engaging with the culture and struggles of Udmurt people, she often dedicates her works to the disappearing of local identity, elusive antiquity, and exploration of the Udmurt cultural code. Aisha Jandosova is Qazaq-Kyrgyz diasporic human, (re)learner and educator/designer, building life between Almaty, Qazaqstan and Providence, USA (on Wampanoag, Pokanoket and Narragansett peoples’ land). Jandosova devotes her time and energy to creating and supporting caring spaces/containers for Qazaq and Central Asian people to reconnect to their ancestors and their ways of being, in order to heal, and to imagine/remember and shape more loving presents and futures for themselves. Jandosova’s current practice involves the slow, long-term re-existencia (the term coined by Madina Tlostanova and Albán Achinte) of the craft practices of her ancestors, and, together with Aida Issakhanqyzy, facilitating BABALAR PRESS, an experimental research, writing and publishing initiative for relearning, reclaiming and reimagining Qazaq ancestral knowledge.

Aziza Kadyri is a multidisciplinary artist and curator with a focus on live/digital performance, experimental costume, textiles and immersive technology. Originally from Uzbekistan and based in London, UK, she graduated with a BA in Fashion Design from Tsinghua University, Beijing, and holds an MA in Performance Design and Practice from Central Saint Martins, London. Her projects explore the themes of migration, displacement, social invisibility, identity, feminism and the loss of language. Kadyri is the co-founder of Qizlar, a grassroots feminist collective based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She was the main artist of the Uzbekistan National Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale of Art (2024).

Milana Khalilova is an artist and designer born in the village of Zalukokoazhe in Kabardino-Balkaria, the North Caucasus. She graduated from the College of Design of Kabardino-Balkaria State University named after Khatuta Berbekov in 2004. In 2017, she was a resident of the Mikhail Shemyakin Foundation in France. Until recently, she used to live in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. She mainly works with animation, traditional craft techniques, and book design. Her professional and research interests include the interaction between the archaic forms of folk, collective art and contemporary art practices, as well as work with the ‘difficult heritage’ of the North Caucasus. Among her recent projects is a collaborative research Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition (2023), released and published by FLEE.

Partner: Ruyò Journal is an artist-run platform dedicated to fostering critical discourse in the fields of arts, film, and theory. Their goal is to contribute to Central Asian cultural discourse and strengthen its presence. By uniting a community of artists and intellectuals, Ruyò seeks to support cultural dialogues both within the region and on a global scale.