Living history
The monumental panel "The History of Tatar Writing", which appeared in the renewed recreation of the boarding school for gifted children in the village of Bogatye Saby (Tatarstan), has become an integral part of the educational process: now schoolchildren can get acquainted with the history of their native written culture outside of school hours - just by looking at the artistic composition included in the design of the school interior.
On September 1, 2014, pupils of the Sabinskaya secondary boarding school for gifted children “Umnik” (Republic of Tatarstan) received a gift for the new academic year: the lobby of the second floor was transformed by a large-scale full-wall panel made of ARCH-SKIN ceramics, smalt and glass mosaics - embodied in architectural design, a story about alphabets used by the Tatar people at different periods of their history.
The competition for the development of a design project for the school's recreational zone was organized and conducted by the Ismail Akhmetov Foundation, which supports education and cultural development. The authors of the initiative are making great efforts to revive a keen interest in the centuries-old history of the Tatars, and the "History of the Tatar Written Language" project is an important step on this path. The monumental composition, reflecting the richness of the Tatar culture in a fun way, helps schoolchildren to deepen their knowledge of their native language and thereby maintains the continuity of traditions and strengthens the connection between times and generations.
The author of the artistic idea and the head of the project is the Honored Art Worker of the Republic of Tatarstan, Candidate of Art History, architect Rustem Shamsutov. According to his idea, the bright mosaic-ceramic panel - the main visual accent in the restrained gray-beige interior - plays the role of a time machine that allows schoolchildren to mentally travel back to the distant and recent past in order to trace the key stages of the formation of their native language. Sections of this exciting journey are conveyed with the help of graphic symbols of those alphabet systems that were used by the Tatars in different eras. The accompanying texts help to understand the intricacies of the history of the Tatar culture and language - on the next wall you can read short comments adapted for children, compiled by the famous Arabic philologist Reseda Safiullina.
Compositionally, the wall is divided into four zones, correlated with the main periods of Tatar writing, each of which is marked by the use of a certain alphabetical system - the ancient Türkic runic writing (VII - XII centuries), Arabic graphics (XII century - 1927), the Latin alphabet (1927 - 1938) and Cyrillic (1939 - to the present day).
An imaginary excursion begins with the era of the runic writing of the ancient Turks. The pastel shades of orange and brown, chosen for this period, are reminiscent of clay and stones - the materials on which the ancestors of the Tatars recorded their texts. The messages of the ancients can be studied from the fragment of the monument of runic writing of the 8th century reproduced on the panel - the quadrangular obelisk "Kul-Tegin", found in 1889 by the Russian researcher N. M. Yadrintsev in Mongolia (ARCH-SKIN ceramics, non-toxic engobe paints prepared on the basis of clay diluted with water, firing, 3m²). Nearby is another vivid example of runic writing - collected in the 20th century by the famous Turkologist N. F. Katanov's tamgas, generic family signs with which Tatar peasants signed until the 19th century (ARCH-SKIN ceramics, engobe paints, firing, 100 x 100 cm, 1 m²). The third figurative element in this section is an artistic interpretation of Turkic letters made of ARCH-SKIN ceramics (collections Moro, Orzo, Materica Moka, Basic Clay, Basic Orange, Colorfeel Crema).
Starting from the XII century, when the ancient Bulgars adopted Islam, the runic script was gradually replaced by the Arabic alphabet (the first Arabic texts appeared in the X century in the territory inhabited by the ancestors of the Tatars - the Volga Bulgars). Marking this transition, the ceramics on the wall are replaced by a sky-blue smalt.
A significant part of this section is covered by the text of the Ikhlas sura (Faith, Sura 112, Koran), made in the ancient style of the Arabic script “Kufi” (rectangular letters with rigid outlines). Following the traditions of Islamic architecture, the authors of the project included short sayings in the composition - proverbs and aphorisms that preserve deep folk wisdom. For the Shamails, Tatar sayings that frame the doors of the offices, the sulse technique was chosen: "Thought belongs to you, the spoken word belongs to people, the written word is eternal", "Language is the key to knowledge, the level of knowledge." The combination of fine calligraphic ligature and large Arabic letters creates a play of scales - it is supported by a linear ornament, which, repeating the pattern of a 12th century Tatar tile, stretches along the entire wall.
The period of the Arabic writing lasted eight centuries, and only in 1927, after the entry of Tatarstan into the Soviet Union and heated discussions about updating the language, the Yanalif, a letter based on the Latin alphabet, was declared the official alphabet. Romanization served as one of the manifestations of the thirst for new forms, caused by radical changes (primarily the rejection of centuries-old Islamic traditions as a relic of the religious past) and utopian hopes placed on the world that was being born in front of everyone. The letters drawn along the diagonals directed upwards on the gray-black-white-red plates of ARCH-SKIN ceramics express the life-building pathos of that time.
The next - and at the moment the last - "reset" of the Tatar alphabet took place in 1939, when the transition to Cyrillic writing was carried out - the final part of the pictorial series is devoted to this period: the pixel mosaic of black and green glass tesserae filling it recalls the flowing on a dark screen mysterious computer scripts from the movie "The Matrix".
The monumental composition made in mixed media is organically inscribed in the architecture of the lobby, which is completely built on the same materials and secrets of craftsmanship: ARCH-SKIN ceramics (Stone collection) were used in the decoration of the walls and ceiling, the floor was filled with smaltoceramics in a technique close to Roman mosaics (Stone and Colors). The unity of materials and techniques used in the architectural and artistic solutions of this interior emphasizes the connection between art and life. The spatial composition of the school lobby is crowned with a sculptural image of Gabdulla Tukai, the Tatar Pushkin, the founder of the modern Tatar language and new national poetry, who lived at the beginning of the 20th century (1886 - 1913). Lines from his poem "Tugan Tel" ("Native language") adorned the pedestal of the monument to the poet (facing - ARCH-SKIN ceramics):
Both tugan bodies, and matur bodies, әtkәm-әnkәmnen body.
Donyada kup nәrsә beldem sin tugan bodies of arkyly.
/ Mother tongue is a holy language, father and mother tongue
How beautiful you are! I have comprehended the whole world in your wealth!
Rustem Shamsutov, Honored Artist of the Republic of Tatarstan, architect:
- The idea of the composition "History of Tatar Writing" was born from the concept of a museum dedicated to the writing systems of the Tatar people - I worked on it as part of a specially created research group, but for a number of reasons this project was not implemented. And when the Ismail Akhmetov Foundation announced a competition for the interior of a school for gifted children in the village of Bogatye Saby, I remembered the idea that had never been implemented and thought that it could find an excellent application not in the museum walls, but in the educational process. The whole conceptual part was already ready - all that remained was to implement the plan, and it is great that the Ismail Akhmetov Foundation accepted my proposal. Except for the preparatory period, work on the site took two months - July and August. As a result, we managed to transfer the content originally intended for the museum exposition into a living context: thanks to the aesthetic experience gained when meeting with a piece of mosaic art, a conscious interest in written culture awakens in the child, he begins to wonder where the letters came to us, the letter that we use, and thus develops, making this knowledge a part of our life.
From an artistic point of view, the innovation of the composition "History of Tatar Writing" is that several materials related to different eras and styles interact in it - smalt, glass mosaics and innovative ceramics. It was possible to implement such a complex solution in many respects thanks to the support of ARCH-SKIN.
Izabella Borisova, mosaicist:
- A group of mosaicists from the Art Residence in Balabanovo, established by the Ismail Akhmetov Foundation, and the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts named after V. I. I. E. Repin. The mosaic set was carried out in Balabanovo under the strict guidance of the author of the artistic idea - the architect Rustem Shamsutov, who regularly came to us from Kazan. Ismail Akhmetov, the mastermind of the project, was directly involved in our discussions.
It should be noted that the entire creative process proceeded in a continuous dialogue mode - this is absolutely necessary in those cases when the project participants work remotely: for those who are engaged in the production of mosaics, it is important to feel the scale of the idea, and for the artist - to understand the limitations due to the characteristics of the material and production technology. …
The mosaic team worked on two of the four compositional sections, which are dedicated to the periods of Arabic and Cyrillic writing. For each of them, a material was chosen that most accurately expressed the spirit of the era - both in aesthetic and production-technological terms: the Arab period was recreated from smalt and ARCH-SKIN ceramics, the Cyrillic period - from glass mosaics.
In the first case, smalt in combination with ARCH-SKIN fine ceramics (3.5 mm) provided a feeling of authenticity of the material, helped to convey the warmth of handwork. The unconditional artistic discovery of the project was the combination of mosaics and ceramics. It was decided to make Tatar sayings written in Arabic script on ARCH-SKIN ceramic inserts, which made it possible to highlight calligraphy in the overall mosaic picture. To make the mosaic, the technique of the reverse, or Venetian, set was used - when the tesserae are laid face down on tracing paper with a sketch of the future panel. The reverse set with subsequent grinding makes it possible to achieve the most even surface - this meets the requirements for finishing the interiors of children's educational institutions, where special attention is paid to the comfort and safety of the environment.
In the section, reflecting the Cyrillic period of the Tatar writing, we were faced with the task of creating a pixelated green-black drawing that implements in the material the key visual motif from the film "The Matrix" - according to the architect's plan, the part of the composition devoted to modernity was supposed to represent the technogenic world: more precisely all this idea could be manifested by glass mosaic - the technology of its production allows one to obtain identical tessera-pixels, which do not give the feeling of man-made and warmth that occurs when in contact with smalt.
Dedicated to the history of the written language of the Tatar people, this work helps to better understand how language and society develop and how the understanding of beauty changes over time. I think that for all team members, this project has become an important experience and a new stage of professional growth. When you create something for children, you need to be especially clearly aware of what you are doing - the future depends on how you feel about your work and how much of your heart you put into it.
