Vleeshal
"Author Once Known":
Contested Authority, Authorship,
Anonymity and Amnesia
24 June 2025
Vleeshal
"Author Once
Known": Contested
Authority, Authorship,
Anonymity and
Amnesia
24 June 2024
The image: Milyausha Abaydullina working on They wove, 2024
Milyausha: Bashqort women didn’t usually sign their carpets. It wasn’t practical, but it also reflected their modesty. At most, they might include the year the piece was made, but even that was uncommon. I’ve often seen weavers’ names on Ukrainian kilims (flat woven carpets) or those made by Qazaqs in Chelyabinsk. Once, I spotted the letter “R” on a Bashqort carpet, but it turned out to be a dedication from the weaver, Mokärämä äbey, to her son Radik.
One of the only films about Bashqort weavers is called Miyakinskaya Rainbow – Asaly Palas. Masters of Folk Weaving of Bashqortostan (2000) by Sarvar Surina. Sarvar traveled to my home district, Miyakinsky, and made a heartfelt documentary about all the weavers she could find.
One of the women in that film is my grandfather’s first wife, Hälime. One day, she found out my grandfather had fallen in love with another woman — my grandmother. So, she decided to leave him. She took her cow, took her daughter, and walked back to her village. Only later did she realize she was expecting his son. This story means so much to me — it is part of my personal family history.
Hälime’s name appears in my work They wove. I dedicated it to the weavers of my district, using names from Sarvar’s film and adding my grandmothers’ names too. Of course, my own name is not on the carpet — I’m following their tradition. Many people who saw it asked, “Is this a shäjäre (a genealogical record)?” Even though I had not thought that way, it became a kind of shäjäre (shejire) for my Miyakinsky district.
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The image: Milyausha Abaydullina
They wove, 2024
Weaving, wool, acryl, cotton
It upsets me that so many weavers will never be remembered by name. To me, every weaver is an artist, and they deserve recognition. They chose colors, dyed the threads, and added their touch to every piece. There’s this whole world of women artists we know nothing about. You won’t see them at festivals or exhibitions. They’re disappearing right before our eyes, and I want to meet them, document their work, and learn from them.
Aisha: Qazaq syrmak and Kyrgyz shyrdak carpets aren’t signed either. Early ethnographic expeditions rarely recorded names. For example, you look at photos from Samuil Dudin’s expeditions [Dudin, was an ethnographer, photographer, and founder member of the ethnographic department of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg] — you know the photographer’s name, the years, the location, the details of the expedition. But the names of the women who made the artifacts? Nowhere to be found. The object itself was important, whether collected or photographed — but not its maker.
Recently, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I saw a usefully revised label on an artwork: “Author Once Known” instead of the usual “Author Unknown”. The artist was known once — who is responsible for their name being lost?
The image: A Qazaq family. The photograph was taken by Samuil Dudin in 1899, in present day Abay region, Qazaqstan.
Kilím is a flatwoven, reversible handmade carpet.
Shäjäre (shejire) is a genealogical record that traces family lineage, traditionally through the male line among the Bashqorts, Qazaq, Kyrgyz, and some other Turkic peoples. In today’s Bashqortostan, there is an emerging phenomenon of the "women’s shäjäre," which centers on documenting and honoring the names of female ancestors.
Samuil Dudin was a Russian and Soviet ethnographer, artist, photographer, and collector. He built his academic expertise through numerous expeditions across Central Asia, Mongolia, and Buryatia, where he actively photographed and took detailed notes. Later, he capitalized on this knowledge by becoming a curator and one of the founders of the Ethnographic Museum in Saint Petersburg. Among his key works are Photography in Scientific Expeditions (1923) and Carpet Weaving in Central Asia (1928).
