My paper will examine how textiles played an integral role in the material culture of Islamic Central Asia, alongside architecture and other portable media of the 10th and 13th centuries. For its theoretical parameters, my paper will consider, in addition to the scholarly works of Lavan and Swift (2009) and Hay (2010), works relating to object ontology, which reexamines materials and things through the methodologies of assemblages, entanglement, and material structures relating to human habits and ceremonial practice (Ian Hodder 2012, Bruno Latour 2007, Ben Jervis 2018, and Pierre Bourdieu 1977). By considering these theories together, I want to examine how textiles shaped how architecture and small portable objects were imagined and made, and vice versa. Indeed, I suggest that, far from strict material categories (such as textiles, architecture, metalwork, etc.), different materials were integrally enmeshed together, creating rich and complex intermedial and materially entangled spaces that must be considered together.
A larger aim of my paper is to foreground textiles as significant materials, which frames how other structures and works are understood, rather than perceiving textiles between liminal relationality of influence and agency between different Central Asian and Islamic artworks. It will examine textile objects attributed to the Seljuk period, including those with so-called Buyid and Rayy provenance, and medieval Islamic Central Asian architectural structures such as the Qarakhanid and Chagatai buildings, for example, the Uzgen mausoleum in the modern state of Kyrgyzstan. Analyses of these objects together will emphasize the key position textiles, among other media, have in conceptualizing such intermedial spaces. Due to the historiographical bias and technical specializations to which they have been subjected, textiles scholars often need to reassess the division of art into different material categories and consider the usefulness of such categories as they pertain to premodern and medieval Islamic societies. Indeed, in Islamic art historical research, scholars like Olga Bush and Margaret Graves have already suggested that Islamic artworks often blur the boundaries between words, objects, and walls in a creative material and poetic dialogue. Like Bush and Graves, I want to illustrate how textiles functioned beyond the boundaries of their material category by including them alongside other media in a “holistic consideration” of Central Asia’s larger material culture.
keywords: intermediality, entanglement, textiles, Islamic art, Central Asia
Blessing, Patricia, Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, and Eiren L. Shea. Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300-1400, part of the Cambridge Elements: The Global Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Bush, Olga. Reframing the Alhambra: Architecture, Poetry, Textiles and Court Ceremonial. United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Graves, Margaret S. Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Hodder, Ian. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things. United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012.
Jervis, Ben. Assemblage Thought and Archaeology. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2018.
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. United Kingdom: OUP Oxford, 2007.
Bermet Nishanova
bnishano@uci.edu
(303)746-6099
Education
Ph.D. present University of California, Irvine
Visual Studies and Art History
MA 2021 University of Chicago
Art History, Master’s thesis: “Visual Experience in the Islamic Princely Court: Chinese Paintings as Genres in the Timurid and Safavid Periods.”
MS 2017 Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts New York University
Art Conservation, Area of specialization: archaeological objects, textiles
Master’s thesis: “A Late Antique Christian Textile Icon of the Holy Mary: A Tapestry Hanging in the Cleveland Museum of Art 1967.144.”
BA/BS 2013 University of Georgia
Art History, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Professional Experience
Teaching Experience
2022-Present Art History TA, University of California Irvine
ARTH 42D Arts of Islam, Alka Patel
ARTH 40B European Art: Medieval to Renaissance, Lyle Masssey
ARTH 40A Art and Archaeology of Greece and Rome, Matthew Canepa
2020-2022 Art History TA, University of Chicago
ARTH 164601 Modern Latin American Art, Professor Megan Sullivan
ARTH 16214 Andean Architecture, Professor Claudia Brittenham
2010-2013 Organic/ Inorganic Chemistry, Physics, and Math Tutor
Division of Academic Enhancement, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Museum Exhibition and Conservation Experience
June 2023 Intern, Département des Arts de l’Islam- Musée du Louvre
2017- 2018 Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
2016-2017 Graduate intern, Abegg-Stiftung, Switzerland
2015-2016 Graduate intern, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
2015, 2016 Graduate intern, Textile Conservation, Villa La Pietra, Florence, Italy
2015, summer Graduate intern, Indianapolis Museum of Art
2012-2013 Pre-program intern, Georgia Museum of Art (GMOA), Athens, GA
Archaeological Excavations
2014, summer Field and lab conservator, Archaeological Excavations at Aphrodisias, Turkey
Scientific Research Experience
2011- 2013 Undergraduate Biochemistry Researcher
Complex Carbohydrates Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Presentations and Publications
August 2023 “Between Objects and Architecture: Intermediality and Islamic Textiles in Central Asia, 8th-12th centuries” (Zoom)
European Conference of Iranian Studies (ECIS), Leiden, Netherlands
May 2023 “The Veiled World: Ontological Parameters of early and premodern Islamic Textiles”
Worldmaking and Embodiment in Early Cultures: Intentional Acts, Material Culture and the Environment, Symposium organized by Matthew Canepa and Nastasya Kosigyna
March 2023 catalog contributions to Les Arts de L’Islam: Au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Edited by Salima Hellal. Ghent, Belgium: snoeck, 2023.
February 2023 “Turkestan Album: Textiles as Material Mediators of Central Asia and its Medieval Past”
Medieval Academy of America (MAA), Annual Conference 2023, DC
Training and other Skills
2018, 2022 Technical Courses on Textile Woven Stuctures and Loom Construction, Centre International D’Etude Des Textiles, Lyon, France
2016-2017 OCAD for Cartography and Documentation, Abegg-Stiftung, Instructor: Anja Bayer
2014 Adobe XD/ Photoshop/ InDesign/ Illustrator, IFA NYU, Instructor: Orit Mardkha
2013-2014 Digital Photography, CC IFA NYU, Instructor: Dwight Primiano
Languages Kirgiz, Uzbek, Russian (native proficiency)
German, Persian, and French (academic reading proficiency)
My presentation will examine two textile fragments (The Met 46.156.6 and Cleveland 1968.246) to consider how their materiality and method of construction reflect the entanglements and assemblages of the broader material culture of medieval Islamic Central Asia. I suggest that these and other textiles engaged in significant material dialogue with other Islamic works, such as architecture, small portable objects, and primary literary sources. Further, I propose that far from strict material categories (such as textiles, architecture, metalwork, etc.), textiles and other materials were enmeshed together, creating complex intermedial and materially entangled spaces, and therefore must be considered together.