Welcoming visitors at The Hall of The Mills is a visually stunning two-part textile installation titled The Shadows of Hope: Yesterday’s Past, Today’s Present – a work that Gulnur Mukazhanova started during her residency at CHAT in Hong Kong, and later finished at her studio in Berlin. Spanning one side of the hall is a largescale canvas-cloth that presents a new visual narrative and movement through fabric cut-outs. Facing it is an abstract textile painting made by hand-felted wool, a traditional material for Kazakh culture.

Embodied within the installation are the transitions and anxiety of the present moment, as well as the opposite forces of deconstruction and creation, connection and disconnection, that drive her work. Amidst unsettling uncertainties, the formal characteristics of her work contains and withstands the conflict and movement of opposing forces, leaving space for hope – a fragile and ephemeral feeling that pins down the fragments of today into the dreams of tomorrow.

Special Display is curated by Alexandra Tsay, part of Spring Programme 2023 Clouds, Power and Ornament – Roving Central Asia.