Vyacheslav Akhunov

<p>In recent decades, an increasing number of transnational art centers have brought to the surface significant art from areas of the world once considered remote. Such unprecedented access to artists, coupled with the sheer diversity of practices worldwide, has prompted art-historical reevaluations that are examining contemporary art from a much broader perspective, seeing it as an art that is of and for the world.</p> <p>Such reconsiderations are likely to inspire fresh methodologies for deciphering art history that would mark a shift away from the categorical summation of countries, regions, and movements to the study of individual artists, active in different parts of the world at various points in time, in the light of their own significance. Vyacheslav Akhunov, the subject of this dOCUMENTA (13) notebook, merits such attention. Since the 1970s he has tackled currents of contemporaneity through multiple apertures: art, philosophy, music, literature.</p> <p>Born in 1948 in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, Akhunov first studied art in Bishkek, then at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Arts in Moscow. Relocating to Fergana, Uzbekistan, he was granted a studio in Tashkent, where he currently resides. Isolated from half the world by the divisions of the Cold War era, he absorbed the paraphernalia of his Soviet environment…</p>