Furqat Palvan-Zade
I am interested in cultural representation and identity politics in Central Eurasia, both in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. I investigate how the material cultures of the region amplify post-socialist ideologies and how ethnographic images from the Global South circulate in cinema, art, and media.
Apart from my academic research, I am engaged in editorial work, filmmaking, and artistic practice. In 2022, I received a Master of Fine Art degree from Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, where I was part of an experimental program focused on the translation of archival research into an art project as well as the correlations between truth and fiction. My art projects were presented at the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile in Hong Kong and the Venice Biennale. In 2023, my works will be shown at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the 14th Shanghai Biennale.
Since 2014, I have been working on the syg.ma platform, a self-organized publication and community of authors from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Since 2020, I’ve been leading the EastEast project (published both online and in print in English, Arabic, and Russian) as its editor-in-chief.
Research interests:
– representation of gender, class, ethnicity in art and media
– embodied knowledge and craft
– history of archaeology
– nationalisms in Central Eurasia
– theory and history of media
– the fact-fiction dichotomy