Catalogue > At random

The project is about the transforming cityscape of Kazan, the millennium old capital of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. With the brand-new buildings and anime costume characters “ Transformers ”, I visualized my impression of this fast-growing modern multicultural city, located in the middle Volga, about 600 km east from Moscow. In Kazan, newcomers would soon notice the futuristic bizarre architecture scattered around the city’s center. Those buildings are somewhat reminiscent of the contemporary but ambiguous glittering architecture in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana and Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat in Central Asia. In Kazan’s city center, visitors would also notice awkward-looking costume characters like ones from American-Japanese robot anime “ Transformers ” giving out leaflets or getting pictures taken with kids for money. Kazan is home to Tatars, a predominantly-Islam Turkic people, but it is more complex and unique, as Tatar, Russian and Soviet cultures have been intertwined in the past centuries there. Now, western capitalism gets mixed with this cultural melting pot, bringing even “ Transformers ”to the city and turning parts of the cityscape a little Disneylandish. Kazan is still in the process of this intricate transformation. This project demonstrates my vision of this transforming multicultural city located near the edge of geographical Europe.

After growing up in Japan, studying in journalism in the University of Missouri, Columbia, and living in Romania for a year, Ikuru Kuwajima has been living and working on visual documentary and art projects mainly with photography in various post-Soviet countries (Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Russia) in the past 10 years. After three years in Kazan, he now lives in Moscow, Russia, continuing personal projects. His artist books “ Tundra Kids ” and “ Oblomov ” were published in Vienna in 2015 and in Moscow in 2017, respectably.