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TRADITIONAL KAZAKH ARTISTIC AND SYMBOLIC BASIS OF THE CONCEPT “HOME” IN THE ASPECT OF VISUAL SEMIOTICS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2023. Issue 2 (36). P. 30-49

As we know, “home” is among the basic archetypes of culture, interpreted as a sign of mastered space and time, as well as the symbolically signified centre of human existence. Therefore, in this aspect, “home” has an infinite potential as an object of research. Thus, studies of «home» in traditional culture in any of its material incarnations – wooden, stone, or felt – concur in the view that it represents one of the symbolically complex elements of culture, conceptually filled with a mythologically universal meaning. This article is dedicated to the study of “home” in the traditional culture of the Kazakhs, the peculiarity of which is a stable legacy of a nomadic civilization. The idea of Tengri as the all-encompassing supreme heavenly god and the nomadic way of life substantiated the specificity of the traditional Kazakh mentality, characterized by a peculiar worldview – the awareness of one’s self in unity with the Universe. The Kazakhs perceived their dwelling with the family as a certain conventional point in unity with the infinity of the universe, accentuated the sacralised in a three-part vertical spatial projection. Therefore, the research focuses on the object-visual elements of “home” – the dwelling of a person in its three ontologically significant and symbolically signified manifestations: cradle – yurt - burial place. Thus, from birth to death a person stays in the “home” as a spiritual-mental structure, where the first earthly abode is a child’s cradle – besik, then the dwelling house – kiiz ui (yurt), and the last abode is the mausoleum (mazar). Symbolically, these “homes” are seen as parts of a single chain of the human lifeworld. Hence the choice of spatial semiotics approaches with access to the techniques of visual semiotics is conditioned. The hypothesis of the present study is the assumption that the conditional symbolic triad, cradle – dwelling house – burial place, in the traditional Kazakh culture is a system of interconnected visual signs. The first element belongs to the sphere of Heaven; the second to the Middle World, the world of the “living”; and the third to the Lower World, which is emphasised by design features and ways of decorating the interiors of Kazakh mausoleums. This hypothesis defined the aim and objectives of this research, which are to study the features of visual signs of the Kazakh cradle – besik, kiiz ui (yurt), and mausoleum (burial place) as semiotic subsystems of the single concept “home”.

Keywords: visual signs, cradle, yurt, mausoleum, Kazakhs, work of art, visual semiotics, communication

THE SEMIOTIC BASIS OF KAZAKH CULTURE: ORNAMENT AS AN ETHNO-SIGN CODE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 1 (39). P. 120-142

The relevance of the study of ornament in a semiotic way is confirmed by the active research in the world semiotic science enriching its methodological reserve more and more. The results of studies on problems of ornament as a semiotic structure and ethnographic code since the mid-twentieth century are illustrated by dozens of works on the material of different cultures: Slavic, Balkan, and many others. However, it should be acknowledged that at the moment all the diversity, beauty, intelligence, plasticity, aesthetics and semantics of Kazakh (and wider Turkic) ornament are little known outside Kazakhstan. Many aspects of Kazakh ornament remain insufficiently studied from the standpoint of semiotic research, which will expand the horizons of understanding not only ornamental art itself as a “chronicle of culture”, but also its symbolic nature and code system. Ornament in such a reading appears as a special kind of language, a sign system that exists in structural unity with other structures of the cultural whole. On the one hand, ornamental design functions in the field of various types of traditional art and crafts: textile art and costume, wood and stone processing, jewelry, pottery, architecture, rock art, tamgas, and others; thus, considering ornament as a special kind of a sign system, we should also remember the polysemantic nature of ethno-sign codes. On the other hand, the internal structure of ornament correlates with other languages of culture: music, poetry (oral culture), writing, dance, etc., as well as with the phenomenon of Tengrian calendar, which is seemingly incommensurable in its functionality. The article presents the results of a study of the structural model of ornament in its correlation with the languages of other phenomena of Kazakh culture.

Keywords: ornament, Kazakh culture, semiotic basis, ethno-sign code