Khadzar of Dreams. Introduction

In this exhibition, the team behind the GES-2: Cities programme looks back over its work in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, and develops the themes and stories of the Yard of Culture project from summer 2025.

North Ossetia has a vibrant and unique cultural heritage. It is a place where local traditions are not just kept alive, but also refined, changed and adapted to current conditions. Institutions of contemporary culture—universities, museums, creative unions and urban initiatives—also play an important role in the life of the region. Interaction between the traditional and the contemporary creates a vibrant semantic system, where questions of who can produce culture, how it is produced, and what its content should be, are constantly being addressed. The exhibition Khadzar of Dreams gives this dialogue artistic form.

The exhibition, which takes place in two spaces (Gallery C6 on the 2nd floor and the Platform on the 3rd floor) centres on images of two urban spaces: the khadzar and the cinema.

The khadzar is a phenomenon unique to Ossetian culture: simple buildings in the courtyards of apartment buildings in North Ossetia, used for social gatherings and special occasions.

Cinemas are symbols of the twentieth century, former urban landmarks, and their crisis in the post-Soviet space can be seen as an indicator of the decline of modernist culture.

The exhibition explores the historical destiny of these public spaces, the forms of human relations that are embedded in them, and the associated models of behaviour and understanding of time. We are invited to reflect on how tradition and modernity manifest themselves in this context.

Both of the two exhibition spaces at GES-2 feature works by contemporary artists, especially prepared for the exhibition as part of the GES-2: Cities programme. They are shown alongside classic examples of Ossetian visual art and cinema, as well as materials from field research and workshops with residents of Vladikavkaz that were part of the programme.

Khadzar

The key to this part of the exhibition is a unique phenomenon of Ossetian culture: the khadzar and the traditions of good neighbourliness that are associated with it. The khadzar is usually a one-storey building, modest in layout and decoration, built in courtyards between apartment buildings in Ossetian towns and cities. Local people build a khadzar at their own expense and it is used for weddings, memorial services, secular and religious holidays, or simply to socialise and play board games. It is a place for gatherings and communal meals.

The widespread construction of khadzars in the Soviet period marked the transition from a rural way of life, marked by communal traditions, to hybrid urban forms of co-existence. It was a way of reproducing and preserving the traditional structure and values of Ossetian society, particularly the hierarchy of social and gender roles, the logic of which is expressed in the very structure of the Ossetian feast, right down to details of the seating arrangement.

A few decades ago, the traditional khadzar seemed to be losing its importance, as social gatherings increasingly took place in restaurants and other establishments. These unpretentious buildings in local courtyards were often regarded as symbols of a bygone way of life. More recently, however, the construction of modern residential complexes with a homogeneous and young social environment is reawakening the khadzar culture. They fit organically into the logic of modern network communications, and their time-honoured status makes them a natural tool for the formation and consolidation of new local communities.

The architectural interpretation, or rather interactive installation, created by UTRO studio, based on an inclusive study of khadzar culture in Vladikavkaz by architect Olga Rokal, deliberately appears unfinished and lacks the features of any specific building. It combines some characteristic elements of the appearance and structure of the khadzar with the functions of an exhibition space and venue for creative and performative events. The approach is consistent with the ideas of the Yard of Culture project, in which three khadzars in Vladikavkaz were transformed into a museum, theatre and cinema centre. The image presented at GES-2 is also an invitation to reflect on the form and tasks of a modern “house of culture” (the Soviet concept, of which GES-2 is a twenty-first century version), which can be deeply rooted in the everyday life of a city at the same time as it embodies the ideas and values of high art.

Here, on the Upper Platform, you can view projects by contemporary authors, spend time with friends and family, as well as participate in other events of the GES-2 programme. The installation features a graphic series by Julia Kartoshkina, who worked on the Khadzar Museum project, as well as drawings and audio recordings of interviews with residents of the courtyard where the project took place, as well as video documentation of a collective performance by the director Karina Besolti, who created the Khadzar Theatre in another Vladikavkaz courtyard.

Cinema

The exhibition in Gallery C6 reflects on the modernisation of national cultures that took place during the Soviet era. Film played a major role in this process, because it was able to convey the historical achievements of national artistic and literary schools to the general public in an accessible form. Collective viewing of films in a cinema brought people together, directed their attention in a particular direction and helped to define the horizon of shared historical and cultural expectations. The system of film production and consumption fell into disrepair in the post-Soviet period. In North Ossetia, as elsewhere in the former-USSR, cinemas and film archives were neglected. The North Caucasus Newsreel Studio, which had operated since 1945, ceased to exist.

The exhibition problematises this cultural and historical trajectory, inviting us to reflect on the forms of collective imagination that we have today, their connection to visual art, and the role and place of contemporary artistic practices.

The centrepiece of the exhibition in Gallery C6 is a large cinema screen showing films shot in North Ossetia during the Soviet and post-Soviet years, as well as works created specifically for the exhibition. The latter include a film by Andrey Silvestrov, shot in collaboration with residents of Vladikavkaz as part of the Khadzar Cinema project, and a film-elegy to Ossetian cinema by Genrikh Ignatov, in which the abandoned premises of a cinema and newsreel studio are returned to life by contemporary heroes.

The alternating frames organise the system of meanings of the exhibition in Gallery C6, offering a visual common denominator. The rhythm of the space, from the entrance to the screen, is measured by rows of cinema stalls that have lost their strict order but are still recognisable for what they are. Some of the seats are occupied by heroes of Ossetian life, as portrayed by the sculptor Soslanbek Yedziev (1865–1953).

Yedziev is an important figure for the Yard of Culture project: his works, deeply immersed in the cares and concerns of his compatriots, was a key reference point for the contemporary artists who worked with local communities to create the exhibition.

The wall to the left of the gallery entrance is taken up by a photo project of the Ossetian artist and cultural figure Marat Sidakov devoted to the khadzars of Vladikavkaz. The wall to the right carries work by photographer Fyodor Telkov, dedicated to a subject of great significance for twentieth-century Ossetian culture: the history of the Gorsky State Agrarian University and its museum in Vladikavkaz.

The visitors are the primary protagonists of the exhibition. Within the setting of an improvised cinema, they decide whether to engage with the projected exhibits or with one another. By doing so, they breathe life into a space of dormant historical meanings, allowing them to manifest in fresh, contemporary ways.