For many this would be the end of the world. This is how it seemed to me when I looked for it on the map: Nukus, the capital of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakia, at the western end of Uzbekistan, where even the sea dries up.
The perception remains while I try to reach it on land. The road runs between cotton fields, more cotton fields and rice fields. This is how the Amu Daria River has bled dry. And yet, upon reaching its shore, it still impresses. Its size corresponds to that of those rivers that you have to know by heart. Someday there will be a real bridge, but in the meantime we cross it on a pontoon of planks stretched on barges. We go in line and doing various balances. When we reach the middle of the walkway, we move closer to the edge to let a truck carrying a harvester pass, and I wonder what one should do if they fall into the water with the car on. The open window or the closed window?
However, we reached the other shore unscathed and it is enough to go up an embankment to see what is there where irrigation cannot reach. The river is life. Without a river, the desert spreads.
And, after barren kilometers, we finally reached Nukus. What has brought me here? Well, nothing more and nothing less than a museum. It was promoted by Igor Savitsky, who, in 1950, was assigned to Uzbekistan as a member of an archaeological and ethnographic expedition. He began collecting folk art. Jewelry, tapestries, dresses, had to be saved before artificial dyes and manufactured products were imposed. He also encouraged local artists. From his efforts the Museum of Fine Arts in Nukus was born, of which he was appointed director. And he set out to collect those works that the officialdom, subject to the dictates of socialist realism, disdained, condemned, repressed and eliminated. In high places, who was going to lift a finger against a nutcase who collected such gobs in such a confinement? Thus, thousands of pieces took the train to this oasis in Central Asia. And the museum collected more than eighty thousand works, the second largest collection of Soviet avant-garde art.
Today it occupies two large floors of a modern building. At the entrance they force me to leave my camera. The visit opens with some oil paintings by Savitsky himself, landscapes of Uzbekistan with its domes bathed in the harsh light of the desert. I pass through different thematic exhibitions, one dedicated to the Aral Sea, one of those who portrayed it when fishing was still abundant. And I discovered an extensive cast of artists that I was unaware of: Alvina Shpade, Mikhail Kurzin, Alexey Rybnikov, Alexander Volkov, Ural Tansykbayev, Vasiliy Lysenko, Aleksandr Nikolayev, Victor Ufimtsev, Nikolay Karakhan... Each one with their own different language, all outside of dogmas academics, often silenced, hidden. Palettes of bright colors, unique strokes, overflowing imagination and, why not, a sense of humor.
The guards sit in groups to talk about their things. We are in a ratio of about fifteen to one. The most suspicious one follows me when I repeat the itinerary to take with me those canvases that have affected me the most.
Only a small fraction of the museum's collections is on display, but it is enough for me to come away reconciled with the human race. Or at least with a portion, with the artists who have something to say and with those who have tried to ensure that their message overcomes the barriers of censorship, even if to do so they have to expose it at the end of the world.
Already at the door, the desert throws its tongues of fire at me. I avoid it by hiding until sunset. Then the terraces of cafes and restaurants are filled with friends, families, couples, who know that this is not the end of the world, far from it, and yet, they have known how to take advantage of it.
