About Khinalig
Khinalig is one of the oldest and highest continuously inhabited settlements in the Greater Caucasus and Europe, known for its historical and cultural importance. Its unique language, which forms its branch within the Nakh-Dagestani language family, is spoken only by the people from Khinalig and is distinct from Azerbaijani and the languages of neighbouring villages.
The village's isolated geography has helped preserve its traditions, including indigenous practices, oral storytelling, and ancestral customs. This isolation has also kept Khinalig mostly unaffected by imperialism and globalisation until recently.
There are three museums: one governmental and two initiated by the villagers. The villagers curate the museums by themselves, and there has been little to no government interference. In 2023, Khinalig gained UNESCO cultural heritage status.
On Museums
Museum: an assembly of significant things, a tapestry of cultures, collaged by a hesitant curator who puts a golden horn next to an embroidered crown in front of a marble tomb. Visual contexts evaporate leaving only a dry exegesis, providing a reasonable meaning to lonely, kidnapped things.
Mwazulu Diyabanza, among other pan-African activists, is taking the artefacts that belong to his ancestors and culture from the museum and bringing them back to homeland. In the interview he says:
“When the Europeans arrived, the first bases they broke were cultural bases, now with this action we try to restore them.”
This act of decolonisation left a big impression on me and made me think about ways the museums are or can be made.
Khinalig, the village on the mountain was too isolated and remote for archaeologists and museologists so the first excavations started only around 2010. Nowadays there are three museums: one governmental and two initiated by the local residents. The villagers are curating these museums by themselves, so far there is little to no interference from the side of the government. It is not a white cube, you can touch and use some objects, there are unwritten stories that are told about the things exhibited, the museum, future of the village, archaeological excavations.
Home museum is especially precious: it is located in the living room of a hunter who has collected things in the mountains by himself throughout decades. You come in the living room, eat, drink tea, listen to him and look at the objects, take them in your hands and rotate them, feel their history not in an alienated manner but here, right in front of you, close to the place they were found at.
Now that the village is slowly gaining the attention of the tourists and researchers, how can one preserve the local initiatives and curatorial decisions, and most importantly, keep the objects where they were found? Maybe it is possible to build an alternative environment for those who want to research, publish, exhibit?