Taus Makhacheva | The Power of Constant Experimentation

“Whenever I see Taus, it’s a jolt of happiness,” photographer Sasha Mademuaselle says. We spent more than an hour in Taus Makhacheva’s studio in an old Moscow apartment, behaving like children: Taus put her foot up on the fan, donned a kokoshnik, a work-of-art headpiece made by David Polzin, and mimicked the bicep emoji in front of her awards for “innovations” and “breakthroughs”. 

Words Julia Vydolob

Photography Sasha Mademuaselle.

“Innovative” and “breakthrough” are great words, but I would rather describe Taus Makhacheva as “steady.” In one of her first works, Carpet, she rolls herself into and out of a traditional Dagestan carpet in an endless loop. Is she trying to reconnect with her roots or break from them? Landscape features a collection of wooden human noses, modeled after North Caucasian faces and referring to legends in which men lose their noses and to the Avar word “merlep” which means “mountain” and “nose” at the same time. My favorite is Super Taus, the artist’s alter ego. In one Super Taus work, a modestly dressed woman calmly moves a big rock from a mountain road as three men look on. As an artist, Taus is truly consistent; all of these works – and others – somehow build into a story.

At the end of March, Taus opened a solo exhibition entitled “It’s possible to raise the ceiling a bit” at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. Among other things, she is showing two major works: Charivari (2019), a reflection on the circus as a phenomenon, and Aerostatic Experience (2019), a work with a giant balloon. She loves to share how the exhibition’s title came about: the entire installation was done on Zoom without Taus ever seeing the exhibition in person, and at some point, she asked about the ceiling’s height, which worried her. The ceiling, as it turned out, could be raised, and the name stayed.

Taus has received a lot of media attention in 2021. The March issue of Czech Vogue came with different covers where model Anja Rubik, Rick Owens’ partner Michèle Lamy, and Czech lawyer Katerina Simácková all appeared as Super Taus holding a rock. In February, one of Elle’s 25th anniversary covers featured a photo of the artist laughing, shot by Tang Siyu, the editor-in-chief of noisé.

Taus does not really want to reflect on what it is like to become an archetype. She says Super Taus asked her to give her fee to the Marem movement, which helps Dagestani women who have been victims of domestic violence.

“Any artist who builds her work on what was built before her, including me, must be ready to completely dissolve her work in the next generation,” she says. “It’s nice when it doesn’t dissolve completely, and some residue is left.” I lift my head and look at a small doll of Super Taus on the shelf. To me, Super Taus is everywhere, a woman getting things done.

The offer to do an interview with Taus Makhacheva comes into my email as we are driving along a mountain road in Dagestan, a place in the Caucasus region of Russia and the homeland of Taus and Super Taus. Heavy showers overnight have caused a landslide, and several rocks sit right on the road. I am reminded of Super Taus calmly getting out of her car, walking past three men, and easily rolling a person-sized stone off the road. This image always comes to mind when I need to be this wonder woman.

Taus Makhacheva, Super Taus, Untitled 1, 2014, 2 min.16 sec. viral video, colour, sound. The action is inspired by the Adventures of Super Sohrab.

Taus Makhacheva, Landscape, 2013-2016, series of objects. Wood work: Kazbek Alikov. Commissioned by Alanica International Art Symposium, NCCA, Vladikavkaz (1-7 noses), production supported by PERI foundation. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: Niko Havranek.

Taus now spends most of her time in Moscow. She often travels to Dubai, where her husband works, and spends less time in Dagestan. Her current work may not be as linked to Dagestan as before, but her interest and identity remain. 

“Take Tightrope (a video in which tightrope walker Rasul Abakarov crosses a canyon holding artworks by various Dagestani artists) and think about what, whose, or which art will be taken into the future (referring to Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s recent exhibition “Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future”). For me, all those questions were rooted in the P. S. Gamzatova Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts (named for Taus’ grandmother). Sometimes, they move to other soil. Take ‘4’224, 92 cm2 of Degas’, which I did for MCBA in Lausanne: it was a large-scale installation with soft sculptures resembling ruins or melted walls, and hand-embroidered walls featuring stories about how artworks entered and exited different museum collections. We worked with the museum’s archive, and we found a lot of stories. For example, the director asked for money to buy works, because the artist’s widow was in a difficult situation financially. One embroidery referred to a gift from a princess; another was a gift from a family because the museum kept their entire collection during the Second World War. And it seems to me that these things are obviously related to Tightrope, since they all talk about artworks and how their value is formed.”

Taus Makhacheva, Tightrope, 2015, 58.10 min. video, colour, sound. Tightrope walker: Rasul Abakarov. Production supported by Cosmoscow Artists’ Patron Programme. Courtesy of the Artist.

She continued, “I recently said in an interview that the speed of travel between worlds and geographies has increased. You race between space, underground, and the sea, so this is going to be in your work. Mining Serendipity, this set of jewelry I made for Frans Masereel Centrum, is also like that. It does not belong to any particular time; it is Renaissance and modern and, at the same time, it is a kind of toolkit where you can twist something and be transported somewhere... Timur Ibragimov, a talented jewelry designer and a friend of mine, saw it and said, ‘Taus, it reminds me of Cloud Atlas.’ God! It wasn’t obvious to me, I could not imagine that someone would see it in a piece of jewelry, and it was super nice, because this is really what’s spinning around me now.”

“But at the same time, there are people, like Super Taus, who are very attached to this land, this context. She often appears as a guide, for example, in the children’s program for my exhibition in the Netherlands. We made a very cool guide with illustrator Sari Szanto, where Super Taus takes you to the exhibition. There are stickers, and you can choose what food she eats—shashlik or chudu (a traditional Dagestan pie)—for strength, then you choose clothes for her, and by the end she becomes your vision of a superhero.”

“Did you explain to them what chudu is?” I asked.

“Of course!”

Super Taus is a strong statement about women, and Taus continues to reflect on women in the world, including the world of art. “My whole studio is female, and we even joke that we can’t afford to hire men. Yes, it’s a joke, but the fact that I am a feminist is shaping the ecosystem that I build in the studio, as well as my approach to work. Of course, I am still a rebel. I went to a cafe in Dagestan, where only men were sitting. (Laughs). But I try to act from a place of empathy and love. My relatives may disagree with me on some things, but I understand the things that are important to them in my behavior when I visit. Therefore, I’ll put on a scarf or wear a dress out of respect, gratitude, and love. It is not difficult for me, because for some of them, it’s their whole life. There is a point at which it becomes hypocrisy, and then I won’t pretend. But I follow cultural rules if they make my family feel safe. For me, the problem of a woman’s position is not limited to women; this is related to the position of women, the position of men, and the attitude towards human beings in patriarchal, traditional, religious, and secular societies. I am always interested in a broader narrative.”

Taus wearing Mining Serendipity, 2020, a set of body-oriented artefacts, brass, glass, gold, black porcelain. Jewellery design: Alexander Olkhovsky, Anna Pavlova | Mineral Weather. Commissioned by Frans Masereel Centrum. Courtesy of the Artist and Frans Masereel Centrum.

“To be an artist, you have to be rich,” Taus admitted to The Blueprint a few years ago. When I asked her about this, she replied, “Did I say so? Oh my God. Well, that was a joke. But there was certainly some truth to it.”

JV: How does a contemporary artist survive? Where does the money come from?

TM: I always speak very openly about money. Of course, I was lucky. Thanks to my family, I could afford to study at Goldsmiths (BFA) and the Royal College of Art (MFA). My education was the best investment in the world. For a very long time, my first husband, Gimbat, financially supported me; many thanks to him. I had a rainy-day fund, and I could just make art and earn whatever. But after we parted ways (she has since re-married), I realized that either I had to become more self-reliant, or I simply could not afford to make art anymore. I chose a path of soft negotiations. Just to give an example from our studio: we have standardized our artist fees for different artworks, depending on the type of exhibition. When you kindly ask for what you need in order to make your practice sustainable, institutions usually agree.

JV: So, a contemporary artist also has to be the manager of a studio, employees with salaries, and production processes. How does all this relate to creativity?

TM: It’s often painful for post-Soviet people to take or discuss money. In 2018, the Cosmoscow Foundation bought five works from me for the Pushkin Museum (in Moscow), because I was the Cosmoscow Artist of the Year, and I decided that, with this financial investment, I would hire two project managers for a year. That decision enabled me to make works on a much larger scale: a balloon in Lyon (Aerostatic Experience) and Charivari. I couldn’t have imagined that I could make artworks of such physical and conceptual scale. There are now six people in the studio, including myself; some are part-time and some are full-time. I am an entrepreneur with a team. Yesterday, I was in debt, and today, I am out of debt, because there was a museum sale, but this is a very precarious existence, one that resembles a swing. Of course, I need several institutional sales per year for this whole system to work. There are commissions, and for large museum projects, there are large fees, and for smaller exhibitions where we simply send artworks with instructions and oversee installation online, we ask for something modest, and it all helps us earn a living from month to month.

JV: I ask about family support for a reason. You are the granddaughter of Rasul Gamzatov, the most famous Dagestani poet. A week ago, I visited the museum dedicated to Gamzat Tsadasa, Rasul’s father, located in highland Dagestan, and I saw a photo of you as a child in one of the ascetic rooms of a wooden house, among family photos from different decades, antique furniture, and dishes. You have been thinking about an artwork dedicated to your grandfather for a while now.

TM: My grandfather died in 2003. Several years ago, I went into his bedroom, took out his sweater, and it smelled like him. I burst into tears because I remembered his smell. I felt a terrible sadness from his physical absence. I remember, when I was little, I was worried that he might suddenly stop breathing in his sleep, and no one would notice it; he himself would not notice it. I often ran into his bedroom to make sure he was breathing. Now I can’t decipher this smell; I don’t even remember it. There were a lot of ingredients, including the smell of pills that I used to bring him at certain hours of the day. Maybe love smells like that to me. This is probably why his sweater had such an effect on me: it was a reminder that he was real.

Probably the most important thing that my family and grandfather gave me was humanity. For him, a person always came first, and he had an amazing ability to forgive and not remember evil. There is a story about him that really supports me and helps me to navigate the world in a generative manner. Once, someone told me something and upset me. My mother called me at that moment, and I shared it. She told me, “You know, they snitched a lot on our dad. Of course, he was a celebrity, and he had foes. I once asked him, ‘Why did you even shake their hands? You know what they did.’ He said, ‘You know, Patya (Patimat), I just wanted to write.’” For me, this is such an amazing example, because as soon as you plunge into this swamp, it can be paralyzing; it’s like entering a different realm where you can no longer dream and create anything. Humanity is the biggest gift I have from my grandfather; that and, of course, the feeling that I am loved. This is probably the most beautiful thing that I grew up with, both while he was around and now.

Archive photo of Rasul Gamzatov.

 JV: How do you relax? Do you need to turn your brain off?

TM: I think I’m still learning. During the pandemic, many people really met themselves for the first time, myself included, and I learned a lot. I learned that I have fears that I didn’t know about. I began to understand myself much better. Before, I often sacrificed personal time, time with my friends, time for myself, time in silence, alone, or that day when you don’t have a plan and you just decide spontaneously. Now I understand that these things are very important to me, and I make time for them. Work often breaks into vacation anyway, because you plan to finish a project in two months, and then you want more; you want to make a set not from the one toy that you have a budget for, but from seven, and you want a giant box, texts, and illustrations (referring to “Roundtable of Fictives” on show at Akademie der Künste der Welt until December 2021). My excitement about art, about exceeding the picture I had in mind, spoils my vacation from time to time. But I try to pay more attention to nourishing my soil, as Ocean Vuong said, and really try to give myself a rest. Yes, I always think. But it’s one thing to think, to look at a blade of grass or at some form and imagine how these forms can migrate. It’s another thing when you urgently need to read an interview, or reply to an email, or look at a contract, or go to production. They’re different stories.

JV: What are you afraid of as an artist?

TM: It is always very scary when an artwork does not come together. I cry sometimes. A very important thing happened in 2017 when I was in Venice (at the Biennale). I thought that this was the peak that I was crawling toward, and then everything would change. Here it is, this exhibition, at the Oscars of the art world. But nothing has changed; there are no flowers, no baths full of champagne. You are the same, and everything else is the same. I was very sad for maybe six months after that. But some kind of switch went off in my head. I realized very clearly that the only thing that makes sense is constant experimentation. Of course, the institutional ladder, large exhibitions, books, and retrospectives are all wonderful; it all feeds you, and this is all an excellent confirmation that your art is interesting. But what makes me happiest – and luckiest – is that different institutions have given me the opportunity to experiment. They call and give me carte blanche; they say, “Taus, we really like what you are doing, please do something for us.” And you’re like, “Wow, can I do this, or that?” This ability to experiment is the most exciting thing to me right now. In my recent conversation with art historian Robbie Schweiger, he put it very nicely: “The institution is not the destination.” Experimentation and witnessing are the end goals. When I look at the artworks of my colleagues, it is like someone is taking me by the hand to places I would never have traveled to. This is the most valuable kind of experience for me. I really hope to be able to do this through my artworks, so that the spectator is also taken by the hand, whether I’m there or not, and led somewhere, where they could not have gone in any other way.

Taus wearing the headpiece by David Polzin, Untitled (Kokoshnik), 2015. This work-of-art headpiece was first given to Taus for safekeeping by artist Alevtina Kakhidze, who received it as a gift from David Polzin himself, during 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art “How to Gather? Acting in a Center in a City in the Heart of the island of Eurasia”. In 2019 Alevtina said it was a gift.

Super Taus, doll, fabric, 2020. Production: Good and strange. Gift from Kristina Cherniavskaia, Veronika Smirnova, Marina Istomina, Anzhelika Baryshnikova.

The story was published in noisé issue 01 The Solstice.