The theme of the Chuvash Biennale 2025 «Seven-winged home» addresses the fundamental aspects of the concept of home in the Chuvash culture. In every nation, home is a basic concept that symbolizes a human being, his self-identity, privacy and family ties.

The history of the Chuvash people is riddled with migrations, exiles, nomadism and desire for rooting. The impact of various ethnic groups and cultures (Bulgars, Fino-Ugrians, Tatars, Mongols, Slavs and others), their close neighbourhood and occasional geographic closeness or distancing made the formation of a unique Chuvash culture, language and customs possible.

In the Chuvash Republic home is called «çурт», «пÿрт» or «кил». The word «кил» is consonant with another Chuvash word «кил» (come, go) which indicates the move towards the speaker, unlike the word «пыр» (come, go) which indicates the move from the speaker. The phrase «кил кунта» means «come over here» but you can’t say «пыр кунта»; it would be more correct to say «унта пыр» - «go there».
The word «кил» might have meant a place where people keep coming back.

Before the resettlement to the Volga region, like many semi-nomadic and nomadic peoples, the ancestors of the Chuvash built houses in the form of a yurt – transportable, easily assembled dwelling made of wooden skeleton and felt. The yurt was also a part of the bride's dowry. The bride brought it to the wedding and later, it became the first home for the newlyweds. In the title of the Biennale this year we refer to this kind of dwelling in order to emphasize the focus on the Chuvash past before sedentarization and to metaphorically consider house as something ephemeral, light, with deconstructed walls but at the same time durable enough for the memory of it to continue existing through the centuries.

It is no coincidence that the poet compares walls of the round house to wings thereby conjuring up another image that is an essential part in the Chuvash mythology and relationship with nature: the figure of a bird. Two birds that play a special role in verbal memory of the Chuvash people are a cuckoo and a swallow. In contrast with Russian folk point, in Chuvashia a cuckoo is considered to be a bird that has magical powers. “A living metronome of the universe” is valued for its gift of fortune telling.

In cosmogonic world perception of the Chuvash there is a Golden Pillar in the dark forest and a magical bird sitting on it as a symbol of heaven and the peak: “77 ҫут ҫанталӑкра ылтӑн йӗтем, ылтӑн йӗтем çинче ылтӑн тунката, ылтӑн тунката ҫинче ылтӑн куккук. (There is a golden threshing floor in 77 worlds, on that golden threshing floor there is a golden stump, on the golden stump there is a golden cuckoo)”. Attributing to the house the presence of wings, the poet unwittingly attaches sacred importance along with its worldly and household ones to the house in the Chuvash worldview.

Home is not only a material term, but also acategory of thinking related to memories, scents, sensations and images that can be attached to different places. For residents of Cheboksary, flooding of a significant part of the city for the purpose of building hydroelectric power station when a lot of houses, streets, public buildings and churches were swallowed by the waters and people were evicted from places where they have lived for centuries and which were a significant part of their self-identification became a tipping point in realization of their connection with a particular geographical point. The incident formed an intergenerational trauma that affected not only the residents of the flooded streets but also the whole population of Cheboksary.

The title “Seven-winged home” also indicates the number of stilts needed for construction of a yurt – seven. This number is a sacred to the people of the Volga region and the Urals. For instance, it was believed that you shouldn’t build a house on the crossroad of seven roads. Marriage between relatives up to the seventh generation was considered to be a sin, hence the expression “seven times stranger” which was used in wedding songs towards a groom. In pre-Christian times, in Chuvashia, commemorations were held on the seventh day. The number seven was endowed with magical, protective properties from illnesses and disasters and therefor people used seven stilts for their yurts.

Holding the Biennale at the Chuvash State Academic Drama Theatre is symbolic and is consonant with the theme of the Biennale. Chuvash Drama Theatre became a visible manifestation of a national renaissance in Chuvashia at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries where national aspirations of the Chuvash intellectuals found their expression. The amateur theatre, which gripped people of the Volga region at the turns of centuries, was the evidence of a developed culture that was only waiting for a stage for its manifestation. During the first years after the first Russian revolution of 1905, representatives of the Chuvash intelligentsia started to stage plays in their mother tongue. After the October Revolution the theatre became a true «home» of national language and the Chuvash traditions, a place of poetry and literature renaissance. Shortly after the establishment of the theatre the first plays that were staged in Chuvash language occurred. The public welcomed the plays with enthusiasm and gratitude and there was a lack of spectator seats. For Chuvashia, the theatre appeared as a part of cultural nation-building where new forms of a collective and individual self-reflection are still being manifested. It helps reflect the way society sees itself, what values it carries and what kinds of historical fractures form its wounds.

The theme of the Biennale «Seven-winged home» reveals these aspects of the theatre's existence, both visible and hidden from the viewer. What is our common home and what is personal? How is it transforming with time, what is it absorbing and excluding, how is it creating the identity and shifting it from one to another direction? The festival speaks of “home” not only as a material value, but also as an ephemeral, easily transferable, “light-winged” one, touching on issues of belonging, homeland, migration, coexistence and consciousness of different communities, peoples and ethnicities in one region.

The exhibition is conceptually divided into seven sub-themes which reveal the versatility of the “home” concept.

Home as a cobelonging
Artists work with the concept of “Home as a cobelonging” – something that brings together, consolidates, welcomes, invites and lures.

Home as a privacy
Represents the works that reveals the concept of home as a deeply personal enclosed space: “Home as a privacy”

Wandering home
Dedicated to the topic of searching for one’s home and shifting the concept of it: “Wandering home”

Home as a remembrance
“Home as a remembrance” is dedicated to memories of home long gone and places that no longer exist.

Home in a ravine
“Home in a ravine” reveals gaps, “lacunas” in intergenerational, territorial and linguistic landscapes.

Home in the grove of the world
“Home in the grove of the world” is focused on the literary, oral and written diversity of the Chuvash cultural field.

Through walls
The last part is represented by performative and concert additional program of the Biennale that is called “Through walls”.