Center for Arab and Islamic Studies

Institute of Oriental Studies RAS

Announcements

21 сентября 2022 года

The First Seminar of the Series "The Eastern Art and the East in Art"

The First Seminar of the Series The First Seminar of the Series "The Eastern Art and the East in Art"

 
The seminar will feature a report by Sophia Zinchenko, Candidate of Art History, Associate Professor of the Higher School of Economics “The Bukraniyas Functions in the Ritual Practices of Western Asia Pre-Pottery Neolithic Cultures”.

Archaeological material from the Levant pre-Pottery Neolithic settlements, northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia showed that the finds of bukraniya masks may be fairly accurately identified by the species (Bos primigenius) and gender criteria and may be dated from the last centuries of the 11th to the beginning to the middle of the 10th millennium BC., before 7600–6000 BC. 

As an examination result of the Bos primigenius skulls/bones usage, suggestions have been confirmed that masks bukraniyas might be considered not only as a way of presenting important symbols, but also as objects used in certain ceremonies.

The interpretation of bukraniyas as masks allows reconstructing the symbolic content transmission of the object through practical application in the ritual actions process, when symbolic and practical functions complement each other.

The seminar will be held in the GAUGN premises (3rd floor). Institute’s employees, students, undergraduates, and graduate students are invited. We start at 14:00.

The seminar “The Art of the East and the East in Art ” is held by Art and Material Culture Department of the Institute of Oriental Art (the Russian Academy of Sciences) and aims to develop topical issues in the history of art study, material culture, and cultural heritage of the Eastern and African countries and peoples.

Among the topics raised at the seminar, we highlight these research areas: 

  • "Historical Memory and Issues of Preserving the Cultural Heritage of the Eastern Peoples", 
  • "Pushing the Eucumene Boundaries: from the Seven Valleys Art to the Great Silk Road", 
  • "Contemporary Art of the East", 
  • "The Art of the Indian and the Buddhist Worlds" , 
  • "The Artist in the East: Roads and Crossroads", 
  • "Museum Collections and Objects of Material Culture", 
  • "Orientalism and Occidentalism Phenomenon", 
  • "Spatio-Temporal Genres of Contemporary Art", 
  • "The Book and Calligraphy Art: From Manuscript to Poster".

The e-mail address for reports, applications and information on the seminar work is oimk.ivran@yandex.ru.