Aida Issakhankyzy is an architect who is also engaged in artistic practices. She works in a variety of techniques, including traditional hand-drawn graphics and paintings, digital media, software and tools, photography and scenography. Her artistic practices can be described as research-based art or art-based research. She states all her practices as dedicated to the questions of space, time, light and architecture, while languages of art give her wider access to the forms of investigations and freedom to explore those questions. […]
Dana Iskakova is an artist born in 1997 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her practice mainly focuses on interactive, ‘imaginary’ art and explores human perception and imagination. She studied finance at the International IT University and Liberal Arts at St. Petersburg University. She is currently working on a project about contemporary art and culture of Central Asia called Steppe Space at Artcom Platform. She is a member of the MATA artist collective. Iskakova has participated in international projects such as QWAS – […]
Madina Zholdybekova is a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator born in Kazakhstan. She addresses questions of women’s bodily integrity, sexuality, multi-dimensional motherhood, kelinism, decolonisation and authoritarian regimes, in work that includes illustration, weaving, sculpture, video and installation. Previously, Zholdybekova has collaborated with openDemocracy, Front Line Defenders and OSCE x CAYN. Her work has been exhibited at Documenta 15, Slavs and Tatars’ Pickle Bar, Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture and Garage Museum.
Aziza Shadenova is a Kazakh artist born in Uzbekistan. She graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2011. The majority of her work is based around humour and absurdism involved in perception of life, memories, womanhood and immigration, often focusing on untangling of her roots and thoughts as an immigrant, a woman, a wife, an artist and as a human being. For her, these are observations and engagements with the past and present, and an investigation […]
Yelena Vorobyeva is a Kazakh conceptual artist who works mainly with her partner Viktor Vorobyov as an artistic duo since the 1990s. Their usage of different genres and techniques results in multi-layered, often ironic, works focusing on post-Soviet realities of constant change, disorientation and their effects on everyday life. The artists have been compiling a precise record of the ephemeral and quotidian details of daily life. They do so in series, sorting images according to their typology. While seemingly insignificant, […]
Nazilya Nagimova is a visual artist born in 1982 in Kazan, the Republic of Tatarstan. Since 2004, she lives in Germany. She has been educated at the School of Arts in Kazan then the Academy of Münster, Germany. Nagimova works mainly with textile as a means to approach subjects of memory and identity. Recent exhibitions include Documenta 15 with the Davra collective.
Furqat Palvan-Zade is an independent curator, researcher, and filmmaker from Uzbekistan. Since 2014 he has been leading the syg.ma project – a community-run platform and an expanding archive of texts on society and art. This platform serves as an engine and a tool for launching various collaborative projects mapping an international community of writers, activists, artists and designers. As a filmmaker and a researcher, he is working on a series of experimental projects investigating the transient geographies and overlapping cultures […]
Jazgul Madazimova is an artist based in Bishkek and born in Kyrgyzstan. She is primarily interested in public and social practice art. She uses tools of art to work with the issues of women, migration and borders. Madazimova practices a collaborative and socially engaged approach integrating artists, communities and spaces. She studied International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Central Asia and contemporary art practices at ArtEast in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev are artistic duo based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. They graduated respectively in art academies in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in the late 1980s. Artists participated in numerous international exhibitions and biennials, including Aichi Triennale (2016), Sharjah Biennale (2007), Singapore Biennale (2006) and Venice Biennale (2005). Their solo shows were held at the Cube Project Space, Taipei (2013), Laura Bulian Gallery, Milan (2010), Winkleman gallery, New York (2006 -2009) and the Art Institute of Chicago (2007). Kasmalieva […]
Aziz Hazara is an artist who lives and works between Berlin and Kabul. The visual exploration of his works takes shape across variety of artistic media, from participatory installations to soundscapes, from video to photography, from text to programmed languages. His interest in the issues of memory, archive, surveillance of the panopticon and the politics of representation, is deeply entrenched in the geopolitics and the never-ending conflict that afflicts his native Afghanistan. The relevance of such issues however overcomes geographical […]