"An artist is a seeker": Dashi Namdakov on inspiration, faith and the origins of creativity

- Let's start with philosophical questions.

What is art for you?

“That's all for me.

My whole life is in this.

I was born in the art environment that my parents created.

- How did you come to him?

- In a natural way.

The environment in which I grew up was in art: in Buddhist art, or in painting, in graphics, in coinage, or in general in handicrafts.

There are eight of us in the family, and our father was a unique person who could do anything.

In general, I consider him a Buryat Leonardo da Vinci.

- Have you experienced a period of creative searches?

- I never had any difficulties with this.

I don’t know for what reasons.

There was no torment, suffering in this regard: there is always some kind of idea that drives you.

It doesn't have to be a sculpture.

It can be an applied thing, graphics ... you indulge in flowers and so on.

You always find yourself passionate about it.

If nothing happens at all, then you can just delve into reading books.

And this is also a process.

- That is, there are periods when the soul does not lie for creativity or there is no inspiration?

- Of course it happens.

You just realize that such a period has come.

You can go somewhere to travel - I personally like to go in such cases to my village, to the taiga, to the forest.

There are mountain streams, or the noise of foliage, or the crunch of snow underfoot.

It quickly recovers everything.

I already know tools that rebuild quickly.

- Since we're talking about inspiration, list the main sources.

- Inspiration?

Everything that surrounds: environment, people, relatives.

You never know what can push you into something.

Of course, architecture is very influential.

When you drive around the world ... right away, say, your skyscrapers are stretched out to you.

The steppe is the opposite.

Here you are, flying steppe ... horizontally.

Each time, of course, dictates very strongly.

- Does the work change depending on the source of inspiration?

- Well, work changes due to age.

I'm an adult, and I've been doing this for many years.

For example, there used to be some names in art, which for you were some kind of values.

A certain time passes - these names change.

Why is this happening?

Because you yourself are changing.

Some artists I didn’t understand before, it seemed - well, what is it?

And now you see that this is aerobatics.

Interesting.

I can give you an example: Rothko, painting.

I thought: "Well, some cubes, what are these ...".

Now I'm looking for him in different places to see him live.

You understand how deep this art is.

This comes with experience.

So is your creativity.

The priorities are constantly changing.

Now, in general, it seems to me, it carries somewhere in minimalism.

Even, here, in painting, when I see a silhouette, outlines of an understandable object (a person or some real creature), this painting becomes not interesting to me.

It just came with age, very strange.

- Have your views on your own early work changed?

- Certainly.

And it's creepy, really.

At one time you thought: "Oh, what things I do!"

Time passes, and you start to be critical of it.

But this is probably correct.

It makes you move on.

I am always on the lookout.

Therefore, I’m probably wandering around the world - because I’m looking.

It's always a kind of cocktail.

When you travel around the world, you ... Let's say I come from Buryatia.

I grew up in this environment.

And then history and different cultures are strung on it.

You yourself, as it is, and string the Italian, American, English culture.

It mixes with your self and mixes into some kind of cocktail.

The result is an interesting product.

This is an experiment on yourself: you drive, travel.

And you never know what it can turn into.

The process itself is interesting.

- Many cultural figures note in your works a modern approach and, at the same time, the preservation of national traditions.

Do you agree with this statement?

- This is a view from the outside, of course.

But, let's say, my first things were so intuitive, so natural that it was not difficult for me to do them.

Sometimes I was asked the question: "How did you find your language?"

I said: “I wasn’t looking for him, this is pouring out of me.”

And only then, with age, there is a lot of work going on so as not to stop at one place.

Because the artist has to change.

And when you are constantly one and the same, maybe some kind of recognition comes, but you lose yourself.

An artist is a seeker, he must understand that he should even, roughly speaking, surprise himself and the world.

- Have you ever felt that you are losing your identity?

- No, it came with mother's milk, and I hold it very tightly.

This is the most valuable thing I have as an artist.

I would not like to lose, of course.

- When you do something new, what is more important for you - the emotional response that your work will produce, or something else?

- On the one hand, the artist should not think whether the thing will find a response from the viewer.

On the other hand, you can't help thinking about it either, you still think latently.

But it seems that this is somehow easier for me - I always live in my own little world.

In spite of everything, I always did what I was interested in.

Thank goodness I was lucky with that.

For me, the biggest criterion is my own opinion, or the opinion of my wife, who has been with me all my life.

Sometimes she sees nuances even better than me.

• The sculptural composition "The Tsar's Hunt"

• RIA News

• © Alexander Astafiev

- This summer, the Land Art Park Tuzhi opened near your native village.

Tell us

- The goals are very simple.

Roots are very important for us, Buryats.

I have children and grandchildren.

If you want your descendants to do well, you need them to have strong roots.

I thought that everything was fine with me.

But last year, when I arrived in the village, I saw: not everything is so smooth.

The people are leaving.

Houses remain in the same number, but there are more empty ones.

I realized that something had to be done.

The Land Park story was invented precisely to preserve the village.

An amazing phenomenon has happened.

First, I talked with the governor, then with fellow countrymen.

And when we started work, so many people flocked to our project from everywhere!

Friends helped, people from neighboring villages came in whole buses.

In this way, they helped themselves, of course.

We are not expecting some guy to come, he will do it all.

We built ourselves an environment with our own hands, in which we are already working.

Such a life has begun there, people are returning to the village!

We have created jobs, and serious processes have started, which I am very happy about.

And this is also a part of harmony, when I can already move on, be free.

- And do not worry about what is happening at home.

- Yes.

Well, it's like your dad and mom, your homeland, your village.

- And how do you generally feel about the idea of ​​large cities, where everyone is starting to leave?

- I myself am like that, moved one of the first.

But deep down, I am very worried about people staying where they are.

Especially Siberia, the Far East - there are very serious trends towards an outflow.

Our project is perhaps just one of the solutions when such processes can ... I know that there are already people who have also thought about what I have created with the guys.

In a different form, of course.

Now we have more livestock, people keep a lot.

There are no free plots in our village.

People come to us to work from neighboring villages.

This trend has gone, very cool.

- What do you think is lost with this outflow of people?

- Everything is lost.

We have a huge territory there and a low population density.

Can you imagine, the Trans-Baikal Territory was once a huge border zone with China.

How many people live on the other side of the border, and what density we have.

And there are also outflows.

This is a serious problem.

- Do you think that people thus lose their own culture, roots?

- Like it or not, small peoples, of course, are losing their culture, a unique feature.

On the other hand, these are global trends.

Of course, you can somehow influence them.

But it seems to me that globalization will do its job.

I love the example from Kathmandu.

Due to the fact that there is no money there, it has survived.

As soon as the money appears, the Japanese can demolish entire unique neighborhoods and build some kind of parking or supermarket there.

This is a very scary thing.

- Could you tell us a little more about your family and childhood?

- Oh, my childhood was just exceptional and amazing.

This already does not exist now, it seems to me, in our places.

I believe that I still found such a medieval culture.

We didn't have much due to the fact that we lived very far from large cities.

And we found such beauty that my children no longer understand, especially grandchildren.

It's a pity.

There are eight of us in the family, I am the sixth.

Four brothers, four sisters.

We grew up in a Buddhist environment.

We had an altar of insane beauty.

In the altar room, we developed film and printed photographs.

We had such a mysterious room ... When you develop a film, there is a red flashlight ... We looked there, there was a kind of fantastic world.

My father created some ideas, and we were also drawn into these processes.

And whole worlds came out of there, it seems to me.

- In one of your interviews you said that you draw a lot of resources and strength from childhood for your own modern works ...

- Everything from there, yes.

I have been for many years.

And there is still enough of the world that I had before, say, seven years.

This world was very eventful and rich.

These worlds that hovered around us - in these legends, tales, epics, epics ... And old people ... these endless stories around the fire!

The children are sitting.

Old people at the collective farm work - either shearing sheep or haymaking - sit around the fire, and endless stories.

Probably due to the fact that I was an inquisitive boy with artistic inclinations, I watched all this like TV.

And this is so firmly settled in my head that I still immerse myself in there and pull out images for my work from there.

- What kind of visual images from childhood do you remember the most?

- Well, the concept of fantasy arose, of course, a long time ago, but especially now, with the advent of "Harry Potters" or these crazy series ... fantasy in all its glory now.

But I was living in this fantasy right at the time.

I didn’t even know this term, and in general I didn’t know the Russian language.

But I lived in such an environment and, of course, only thanks to this I have this world - very rich.

- For

- First, I went to Italy in search of technology.

I needed a very good casting of bronze, and in search of this casting I ended up in Italy.

We spent a lot of time there, and a lot of work was done.

Whole collections came out of there.

From there I traveled a lot to exhibitions in Western countries.

Then the British lured me away.

We lived in England for five years with my family.

And then at some point I just in the morning realized that I was no longer interested in anything there.

That everything that was interesting, I took.

And then you have to return to your homeland where a full life, complete in every sense.

You live there - with all that everything is fine - a kind of half-life.

All the same, your homeland is constantly in your head.

Moreover, among us, among small peoples, this is even more pronounced.

At one point, I announced to the family: "Let's go back."

The family was unanimously in favor, and we all came.

- Let's talk about religion in your life.

How big a role does it play?

- I grew up in a Buddhist family, deeply religious.

In this environment.

All my actions are literally imbued with Buddhism.

I didn't even suspect the existence of some pagan things, until at some point I got very sick.

There was a story in my life, an amazing phenomenon, when I was one grandmother, who was a shaman ... She found the cause of my problems, performed a ceremony, and I became a healthy person.

And it just turned me over.

Then I began to study what kind of phenomenon this is - shamanism, paganism, all these stories.

I began to communicate with these people, search, read about this case and understand ...

These two things sit very tightly in me - both Buddhist culture and shamanic history.

And then, when you travel around the world, it is clear that the West is Christianity.

I really loved to go to Catholic churches there.

There are crowds of tourists, it's somehow easier.

It was more difficult to enter the Orthodox, after all, it is not for nothing that the Orthodox Church is called.

It is more closed.

And the Catholic Church ... Even this collection, "Venice", will be on display in the Catholic Church.

Then I had a story when I was invited to a project with an Orthodox church.

And it was just an insanely interesting project life for me.

I am very grateful to the people who invited me.

A huge world of Christianity, Orthodoxy opened up for me.

It definitely enriched me.

• Artist and sculptor Dashi Namdakov at the personal exhibition "The Way Home" at the Museum and Exhibition Center of the Trans-Baikal Territory in Chita

• RIA News

• © Evgeny Epanchintsev

- Can you tell the story with the shaman?

How did this influence your understanding of religion, did it strengthen your faith?

Or has it somehow changed fundamentally?

- This story did not change anything, in terms of ... Buddhism in Buryatia with paganism is in any case mixed.

I know there are such pagan stories in the lower pantheon of Buddhist deities.

And the shaman ... this is a long story, an amazing phenomenon, which I simply did not suspect.

If I had not experienced this story myself, I would not even have known that it was such a force.

I then realized that the world is definitely not simple.

People who are far from this do not understand, they think you are some kind of dense.

But in fact, when all this passes through you ... An incredible story.

If I had not passed it myself, I would not have believed this story.

- Did you have to deal with similar things later?

- Oh sure.

I began to study deeply, look for these people, communicate with them.

I just needed answers.

And I realized that it is very ... it is still very close to nature.

It's just that these people have preserved nature, the laws of nature.

We just broke away.

And this story is amazing to us.

In fact, these are all stories related to nature.

They have their own laws, which we have abandoned ... And that's bad.

- Do you meditate?

And what is meditation to you in general?

- Yes, I have my own daily rituals.

Every morning, before having tea, we share a treat.

- This year you received the honorary title of Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts.

What place do awards have in your life?

- I take it very lightly, I never aspired or ran after them.

I became an academician of the Florentine Academy earlier than the Russian one.

Sometimes it seems like it would be great if it was given earlier, when you need it, and when it helps.

On the other hand, it's all the same for some merit ... I could relate more easily.

But a huge layer of artists who are folk artists, honored, academicians, and so on - they also received this work for their merits.

Therefore, such an institution is very important here in Russia.

- Does it somehow affect your self-esteem, or has it been formed for a long time?

- I am free from these things.

- About creative freedom.

You, one might say, are lucky to work primarily for yourself ...

- This environment in which I grew up ... No one has ever paid money for my father's work.

He gave away everything to fellow villagers and relatives.

His items (so much produced!) Are in different houses.

And he blissed out of it.

I just got great pleasure from the process itself.

I think the same thing sits in me.

And I was just lucky that after the Irkutsk exhibition collectors started buying my works.

Since then I am, let's say, a freelance artist.

It is great happiness when collectors, connoisseurs, museums, galleries buy your work, and you live on it.

So you can afford free creativity.

I never thought that life would turn out this way.

I didn't think that my art would be interesting to someone outside of my habitat.

But it turned out that the whole world is open.

Marvelous.

- Where would you advise to look for strength and inspiration for those who want to be creative, but for some reason are afraid, thinks that he will not succeed, or that his art is not needed by anyone?

- There is no panacea, of course.

I can't even convey this to my children, because there is no longer this environment, which was in my childhood, which made me a man.

It seems to me that the question is precisely in the roots, in the family, in the pedigree.

In the land you grew up in.

Somewhere there you have to look.