The principle of “around the world in 80 days” (where Garage curators visited virtually all regions of the Russian Federation) that we chose as the basis of our preparatory work for the Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art sent each member of the team to unimaginable places—the kind you visit once in a lifetime by some sort of divine mistake. However, these contemporary art expeditions radically changed our notions of the geography, scale, and value of what is taking place outside Moscow and liberated us once and for all from metropolitan snobbery and pernicious omniscience.

Taking over from my colleague, Garage’s North Caucasus specialist Andrey Misiano, I headed for the region following the route Stavropol–Cherkessk–Nalchik–Vladikavkaz–Grozny–Makhachkala. Just the names should raise the reader’s testosterone level, insofar as there is virtually no other Russian region with such uninhibited macho energy and clear-cut gender roles. I quickly understood that I couldn’t work on my laptop in a taxi, because a man was driving the car (and how he drove it!) and I couldn’t ask him to turn down the loud music which was the soundtrack to our journey. Hardly suitable conditions for writing… In Grozny, I learned that “gentlemen come first.” In Makhachkala, I experienced all the joys of local traffic—turn signals were invented by cowards and nothing is more approximate in the Caucasus than the rules of the road. For a week, I had to forget that women are also allowed to drink alcohol, and be accustomed to long male monologues about order, the structure of the universe, the life stories of sons and brothers, and so on.

In my view, Stavropol is one of the strangest cities in Russia. Situated in the flatlands on a branch railroad line in the spatial vacuum between European Russia and the Caucasus, this city evokes a mass of literary associations that mostly arise in the interstices of descriptions of visible reality in the texts of Andrei Platonov or Leonid Lipavsky. You simply do not know how to approach this marshy space that exists in geographic limbo. It is totally devoid of those special features and characteristic traits that our consciousness usually grasps (like handholds on a cliff) to articulate an intelligible image of what it sees. A population of almost half a million and a large university exist within a cultural landscape that is just as flat as its physical surroundings. The city has one private gallery showing anything similar to contemporary art (with such curiosities as a marble bust in an astrakhan hat), an art museum, and the 8 Spartak Street art loft, which is located in the center across from the local brewery (the sour smell of malt pervades my memories of everything I saw here).

Daniil Saunin, our guide and the main character in our story, is simultaneously a cultural entrepreneur, a proponent of new media, an organizer of events, and, generally speaking, the voice of contemporary culture in Stavropol. Together with friends and collaborators, he turns former industrial facilities into art venues, organizing art fairs, making music, engaging in video mapping, and occasionally holding events that feature all of the above. Discussing the region, Daniil described the city of Krasnodar as a good example of a grassroots initiative by artists to organize themselves, stimulating the interest of the local community and creating a basic infrastructure and environment that attracts artists from across the area. My stay in Stavropol ended with a wonderful home-cooked dinner. I was ready to continue my search for contemporary art in the fissures of the high Caucasus.

As you approach Karachay-Cherkessia, the landscape changes significantly. Space seems to regain its fullness, mountains on the horizon circumscribe the boundaries of the visible, the air becomes thicker, and large clouds move through the sky at a high speed. Everything becomes brighter and less ambiguous—not just the daylight (although contrasts are undoubtedly more intense here), but also the polarity and concentration of life. We drove past local villages (auls) to reach the hotel complex at Adiyukh, thirty kilometers from the center of Cherkessk. It’s like a Turkish all-inclusive hotel and, in the spirit of Russia’s recent confrontation with Turkey, we pass through a checkpoint to enter the hotel grounds. At reception I asked, heaven knows why, whether we were the only clients in the hotel, and it turned out that we were—on a territory of seven hectares or so. This made things seem even more exotic. Some steps in the grounds of this Cherkessian Versailles leads to the tower of Adiyukh where, according to legend, a beautiful woman waited for her beloved, illuminating the way with the light of her dazzling white hands (Cherkessian women are famous for their white skin). Like all romantic legends, the story ends tragically with the heroine’s death.

To the surprise of all the hotel employees, we left the following morning for Cherkessk, where we were met by Cherkessian Minister of Culture Madina Gogova. Here we saw something which made the biggest artistic impression of the entire trip, although it had little to do with contemporary art. Madina showed us a Soviet-era observatory which houses the largest telescope in Eurasia, and the valley of unique tenth-century Orthodox churches in Lower Arkhyz. The domes of the observatory and the half-ruined churches had something in common: an isolation and remoteness from time and context (whether Islamic, modern, or economic). This is why these sites attract artists who, thanks to the Minister of Culture, come here from Russia and Europe for residencies.

An essential part of any visit to Arkhyz is the roadside tavern (that also stands on the banks of a mountain river) with the evocative name At Grandpa Hassan’s. It turns out Hassan is a real person, a charming Cherkessian offering authentic, delicious food without the glitz of the Moscow restaurant Old Phaeton, where the owner’s namesake, mafia boss Grandpa Hassan, was killed a few years ago.

As for contemporary art, it will appear here one day. In the meantime, I will never forget the evening of Cherkessian songs. And when I say never, I mean never!

Vladikavkaz is the capital not only of North Ossetia, but also of Russia’s movers and shakers. Conductor Valery Gergiev is not the only example. You immediately sense it when you meet Galina Tebieva, Director of the North Caucasus Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts. It would not be an exaggeration to say that she has singlehandedly raised a whole generation of contemporary artists. Vladikavkaz is the first stop on my route the North Caucausus where there is a contemporary art center with an active program and energetic people. To a large extent, this is the result of the Alanika Festival, also organized by Tebieva, that brings together artists from across region and from neighboring countries.

Our meeting with contemporary artists took place at the National Library. It was attended by around twenty people, from well-established artists to young and enthusiastic beginners. Stanislav Kharin works with the symbols of the city of Ordzhonikidze (the Soviet name for Vladikavkaz) and photographs of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Stalin’s friend and collaborator, who was either killed or committed suicide in 1937. Kharin makes witty collages, as well as working with installations and other media. The artist and photographer Anna Kabisova—who studied at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia—and her friends have launched a fascinating Internet project called the Soslanbek Yedziev Museum, focused on the work of a sculptor often referred to as the Ossetian Pirosmani. This museum, which exists only in the virtual world, has extensive exhibition and educational programs, and residencies scheduled for the near future. Alyona Shapovalova is a painter and a curator who works in such far-away places as Moscow and St. Petersburg. As a lover of laconic and delicate forms, I was particularly struck by her collages in Moleskine notebooks. There are also young photographers who, encouraged by Tebieva, risk entering the city’s public space.

In the evening, we found ourselves in an artist’s studio with a fireplace, where we were treated to wine and Ossetian pies with three different fillings and spoke at length about the development of art and other sublime topics.

Everything changed as we approached Chechnya. Muslim Ingushetia differs profoundly from Christian Vladikavkaz. Checkpoints began to appear, and the taxi driver told the armed guards at each one, “These are Muscovites who I’m taking to Grozny.” They looked at us with suspicion, but we continued on our way without a hitch, listening to the driver’s jolly stories about the quantity of wine Ossetians drink and the important role that the army plays in the lives of real men. We periodically came across cars with the license plates KRA (Kadyrov Ramzan Akhmatovich)—they can do whatever they please on the roads. As we entered Grozny, we were greeted by three portraits: president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov; his father, the late Akhmat Haji Kadyrov;, and Vladimir Putin. The capital resembles a luxury hotel covered in marble, granite, and “you know who.” I put on a long dress and went out onto Putin Avenue, where the Contemporary Art Center (and anti-café) is located. The situation is not very easy for artists. By pure coincidence, I saw three short video works by Zaurbek Tsugaev and understood that I was seeing a miracle of sorts: a person with exceptional visual intuition and a resilient gaze who appeared out of the dense layers of granite air.

It was Museum Night in Grozny: we visited the Museum of Akhmat Haji Kadyrov and the National Museum of the Chechen Republic. I would like to thank those who opened the museums’ doors to us at that late hour.

Arriving in Makhachkala, we shook off the granite heaviness of Grozny, finding ourselves in the apparently familiar atmosphere of a Moscow suburb with myriad posters advertising various goods and services, women wearing sparkling dresses in the streets, and tough guys in caps with the logo GORETS (mountain-dweller). In the hotel, a woman carefully making “trees” out of photocopies of thousand-ruble bills asked me the strangest question I’d heard for a long time, “Are you a bank transfer?” (she meant had we made an advance payment). She was totally dumbstruck, however, when Taus Makhacheva arrived to meet me. Taus is one of my favorite artists and an old friend, and had agreed to represent the entire Dagestani artistic community. She can be very loud, which is not typical of Dagestani women in public spaces, hence the receptionist’s surprise.

Although Taus has already directly or indirectly influenced the majority of the emerging artists in Dagestan, she continues her educational and public awareness activities by providing access to information and showing by example (like Aslan Gaisumov in Chechnya) what it means to rise above the local context and make an international career.

The first artist we met was Murad Khalilov. He works in a range of media, including painting, but his extremely ironic videos are his most original artworks. We then had a long day of meetings with artists working with coins, cloth, watercolor, and India ink. Some of them try to be “like Taus” (“Well, you depicted noses, and I’ve made ears.”). The artists Shamil Akhmedov and Musa Gaivoronsky deserve special mention. These young men, who have taken part in exhibitions in Krasnodar and St. Petersburg, represent everything you expect from young artists: insolent gestures, a lot of irony, seriousness, quasi-fatal experiences, and the bold treatment of diverse materials and ready-mades.

Alcoholic drinks are not available in most cafés and restaurants in Makhachkala, dinner in a private room was a particular treat: we were offered the world’s strangest Cabernet while surrounded by cushions with pearls and semiprecious stones. We sipped it while talking about contemporary art or passionately discussing the Architecture Biennale in Venice.

We flew back to Moscow from Makhachkala Airport, paying a visit to Kaspiysk on the way. This seaside town is home to First Gallery (as it happens, the name of Moscow’s first private gallery, which opened in the late 1980s), where we were taken by Musa Gaivoronsky. On our plane was a team of freestyle wrestlers. Given the disproportionately large number of champion wrestlers from this small republic, who else would you expect to meet on a plane from Makhachkala?