THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Ashghabat was filled with gold statues of Turkmenbashi. In these statues, which had an ecclesiastical aura, Bashi was El Dorado, the Man of Gold, all-powerful, all-knowing. People were meant not to gape at them but to venerate them. One revolving statue, showing Turkmenbashi with his arms raised, rotated according to the sun and seemed to guide it across the sky. Other statues showed him sitting, striding, waving, saluting, and smiling a twenty-four-karat smile. One even showed him as a precocious golden child, seated in the lap of his bronze mother. He once said to a journalist, “I admit it. There are too many portraits, pictures and monuments [of me]. I don’t find any pleasure in it, but the people demand it because of their mentality.”

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