|
For thousands of years, the peoples of Central Asia, including the Turkmen, have created spectacular textiles for every aspect of life. Infinite care, resources and time have gone into making elaborate costumes (connoting the wearer’s identity and place in society), equestrian items, and exquisite furnishings for settled as well as nomadic lifestyles. Items of dress were decorated literally from top to toe: boots were embroidered with metal thread, while hats were stitched, appliquéd and felted. The women of a family would come together to embroider dazzling pieces to form part of a bride’s dowry. Combined, these objects tell an evocative story of life along the Silk Road in times past. This program, with Prof. Snezhanna Atanova, a native Turkmen, will speak specifically on the Turkmen people and their textiles.
Snezhanna Atanova is an Assistant Professor at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. As an ethnologist, originally from Turkmenistan, she studies the material culture of Central Asia in bazaars and in private and museum collections. Her research focuses mostly on Central Asian textiles, their production, consumption and meaning coupled with historical and cultural context. Currently, as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and Associate Researcher at Constructor University in Bremen, she is engaged in studying Central Asian collections housed in European museums, using the extensive knowledge gained through her fieldwork and archival research in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
| 
