A struggle both internal and external between faith and reason unfolds through a conglomerate of books, tales, myths, historical documents, folk stories, and archeological findings. The convoluted storyline traces the history of the Khazars:
They originated from the distant East. In the seventh and eighth centuries, this new empire became a decisive force between the Caspian Sea and the River Don that lasted up to the middle of the tenth century when it disappeared completetly. The Khazar kings did not prohibit the activities of Christian and Moslem missionaries. Both religions maintained places of worship and schools on Khazar land. However, the Khazar kings and their retinues embraced a third great monotheist religion, Judaism.
Because the entire Khazar empire was situated at the delta of the Volga river, most of the archeological findings related to its assumed location and culture are buried deep under river mud, never to be found, making its supposed capital, Atil, a modern Atlantis.
The story of the mass religious conversion of the Khazar people thus has almost no material evidence to support any of its argued narratives. Until recently, a new candidate for Atil’s location has emerged. It’s Semibugry, a large Khazar-era city discovered in 2019 by researchers from Astrakhan, a city on the Russian steppe with a name identical to my last name.
In his book The Reconditioned Inspiration, Pesach Salvosky advised the young artist: “Establish yourself in the right dimensions in order to go into the picture you have created. Observe, that inside the picture, there is a universe.”
I create a picture. At the front of the picture I draw speculative history, a re-figuring of an origin story. The diagram of a dialogue. A paradox. A Belief crisis. Far in the background, I paint a triangular palace on an island over a swampy ditch in the middle of the city of Atil. The city’s outskirts extend almost to the edges of the picture, separated from it by a thin stroke of desert.
I establish myself in the right dimensions.
I go into it.
