Workshop visitors are invited to rework texts and stories accompanying selected items from museum displays. Together with experts, the Museum staff, and activists, participants will suggest new labels for select items of Kubachi* ceramics from the collections of Russian and British museums. One possible strategy, for example, is to shift the focus to the origin of a particular object and its connection with the community. This collective action is set to become a reflection on a new interpretation of museum exhibits and forms of inter-museum interaction, whereby all participants would be heard and have equal rights.

*Kubachi is a mountain village in Dagestan, whose dwellers have preserved in their home collections multiple examples of fifteenth–eighteenth-century Iranian dishes.

Hosts

Nastya Indrikova is an independent researcher of museum collections. She is the ethnographic and photo editor at EastEast, author of the Telegram channel Murmolka about museum anthropology, former photo director and producer of the project Big Museum and photo editor of the educational project Arzamas.

Shaheen Kasmani is an artist, educator, producer, and curator. She co-curated The Past is Now exhibition at Birmingham Museum in 2017–2018. Shaheen specializes in Islamic Art using paper and textiles and aims for her work to be part of telling a story and reclaiming forgotten narratives.