Art and Culture - The Times Of Central Asia

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Saiga

Prince William Praises Kazakhstan’s Saiga Recovery

Britain’s Prince William has highlighted Kazakhstan’s success in restoring its saiga antelope population, crediting government support for the animal’s recovery during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show. Asked about the distinctive antelope and the Altyn Dala conservation initiative, William said the species had recovered from critically endangered status to large numbers. Kazakhstan’s government had recognized the animal’s importance to the country and to conservation, he said: “They threw their full weight behind it.” Video: The Graham Norton Show / So Television / BBC The exchange came during an Earthshot Prize edition of the BBC chat show broadcast on October 23, with a photograph of a saiga displayed in the studio. William appeared alongside actors Cate Blanchett and Hannah Waddingham and conservationist Robert Irwin. Altyn Dala won the 2024 Earthshot Prize in the Protect and Restore Nature category, receiving £1 million to support its work. The initiative helps restore Kazakhstan’s vast steppe ecosystems, with the saiga’s recovery among its most prominent achievements. In an October 2025 update, Earthshot said Altyn Dala had helped the saiga population grow from around 40,000 to more than four million over two decades. The recovery followed a steep decline caused by poaching and disease. The initiative brings together Kazakhstan’s government and the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, with international conservation partners. Its work includes tracking saiga movements to help protect breeding and feeding grounds. Altyn Dala has also helped return endangered Przewalski’s horses to Kazakhstan, extending its restoration work beyond the antelope that drew attention on Norton’s sofa. Separately, King Charles III sent President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev a congratulatory telegram for Kazakhstan’s Republic Day, according to an October 25 statement from Akorda. The king praised the friendship between the two countries and reaffirmed his commitment to expanding bilateral cooperation.

Art and Culture

Threading a New Canon: Interview with Batima Zaurbekova

How does an artist born in a remote village in Kazakhstan become one of the country’s most recognized artists? “I realised that if I put in the work, I can achieve everything,” says Batima Zaurbekova, a pioneer of Kazakh tapestry, as she walks through Threads of Heritage at the Abylkhan Kasteyev National Museum of Arts in Almaty. The exhibition runs from September 25 to November 8, 2026. An energetic lady with a strong personality and a playful attitude, Zaurbekova is the subject of a retrospective marking her 80th birthday and consecrating a lifetime of artistic production, at a time when Kazakhstan, event after event, is gaining ever greater international cultural recognition. Video: TCA. Narration: Naima Morelli. It is indeed a momentous time to be in the art world in Kazakhstan. At the forefront of the discourses on de-coloniality in the arts, and among those contributing to a new canon of contemporary art, Kazakh artists like Zaurbekova embody what is truest to their culture and local specificity, letting it flow in the global discourse. [caption id="attachment_58628" align="alignnone" width="936"] Detail of Batima Zaurbekova’s The Bride’s Farewell (2003). Credit: Naima Morelli.[/caption] The passion with which Zaurbekova describes even the smallest technical details reveals her deep love for weaving. That devotion is also a political stance in the face of the Western canon of art history. The reclamation of an art canon which would belong to Central Asia started in the second half of the 20th century, when artists worldwide challenged the relegation of textiles to the category of craft. Starting from the very local arts of felt and weaving, and against the canon of Soviet painting, a generation of artists recovered something that was truly theirs and called it by its name: not simply craft, but art in its own right, with Zaurbekova at the heart of that movement. [caption id="attachment_58629" align="alignnone" width="2560"] Entrance display for Threads of Heritage at the Abylkhan Kasteyev National Museum of Arts in Almaty. Credit: Kirill Fedorov.[/caption] A matriarchal line While today biennales and fair around the world look for those artists whose cultural background is legible in their art, it wasn’t always like that. When Zaurbekova began weaving in the late 1960s, her teachers strongly discouraged her from devoting herself to weaving. Her teachers, many of whom had trained in Leningrad and Moscow, saw her as a painter, at a time when textiles were still considered a “lower” type of art, and far too slow and demanding. “I’d spend fifteen hours every day for days on end working on just one tapestry, and my teachers would tell me: ‘It’s so slow! In the same amount of time you could have painted three paintings already!” she tells me, laughing. They used to scold her with a Kazakh saying for it: “You’re digging a huge well with a small needle.” Zaurbekova was born in 1946 in Furmanovka, in the Moiynkum district of the Jambyl region, and grew up in Merke, where her family moved when she was in fifth...

Art and Culture

Kazakhstan Joins Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia as Observer

Kazakhstan has been granted observer status in the Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia, an organization established at China's initiative. The Ministry of Culture and Information announced the decision on October 18 following a meeting in Hangzhou. Representatives from more than 20 countries attended. Kazakhstan hopes to pursue joint archaeological research and use new technologies to preserve historical monuments. The alliance was established in 2023 and is headquartered in Beijing. It has operated as an intergovernmental organization since 2024. It focuses on preserving Asia's historical heritage, supporting archaeological expeditions, restoration projects, and the exchange of scientific data. Kazakhstan has joined as an observer for now, with the possibility of full membership remaining open. At the meeting in Hangzhou, Kazakhstan's Vice Minister of Culture and Information, Aibek Sydykov, proposed joint research into the Silk Road, training for restoration specialists, and the use of digital technologies and artificial intelligence to assess the condition of historical sites. Silk Road heritage sites are of particular interest to Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is home to the remains of ancient settlements and archaeological complexes associated with this trade. Some are part of the UNESCO World Heritage property Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor, a transnational designation encompassing sites in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and China. The three countries already share obligations under UNESCO to preserve the Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor. In 2025, the World Heritage Committee called for outstanding management plans for the heritage sites to be completed and requested a joint report on their state of conservation by December 1, 2026. In March 2026, Kazakhstan announced that the Zharkent Mosque and Almaty's Ascension Cathedral had been added to UNESCO's Tentative List, an inventory of sites being considered for possible nomination to the World Heritage List.

Almaty Museum of Arts

Almaty Museum of Arts Begins Centre Pompidou Partnership With The Clock

A year after opening, Almaty Museum of Arts (ALMA) has brought one of contemporary art’s best-known works to Kazakhstan: Christian Marclay’s The Clock, a 24-hour artwork assembled from thousands of film and television clips. The installation, jointly owned by Centre Pompidou, Tate, and the Israel Museum, marks the beginning of a long-term partnership between the Almaty museum and its Paris counterpart. The Clock opened to the public on September 12 and will run through October 12. The work is being shown in Central Asia for the first time. Marclay created it in 2010 from thousands of fragments of films and television programs showing clocks or referring to time. Together, they form exactly 24 hours of screen time synchronized with the real world. If a visitor watches The Clock in Almaty at 3:42 p.m., it is also 3:42 p.m. on screen. In 2011, the work won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. A year later, it was jointly acquired by Centre Pompidou, Tate in London, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The Clock has since been shown at major museums around the world. Four 24-hour screenings are scheduled in Almaty, on September 19 and 26, and October 3 and 10. “Cooperation with Centre Pompidou is not a one-off event, but the beginning of a long story,” museum founder Nurlan Smagulov said in the museum’s announcement of the exhibition. ALMA opened on September 12, 2025. At its core is Smagulov’s collection of more than 700 works of modern Kazakh art, assembled over the past three decades. It includes works by Salikhitdin Aitbayev, Sergey Kalmykov, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, and other leading Kazakh and Kazakhstan-based artists. According to the museum, more than 460,000 people visited ALMA during its first year. The museum staged four major exhibition projects, including a solo exhibition by video art pioneer Bill Viola. For its first anniversary, it opened Müsinder, an exhibition spanning seven decades of Kazakh sculpture. More than 110 other events included lectures, discussions, concerts, and film screenings. The museum also published three books. The arrival of The Clock marks a new stage in the young museum’s international ambitions. Centre Pompidou has been expanding its presence beyond Paris for more than a decade. Its Paris building is closed for renovation until 2030, giving added scope to its international exhibition program. Málaga opened in 2015, and a project in Shanghai followed in 2019. Centre Pompidou Hanwha opened in Seoul in June 2026, while KANAL–Centre Pompidou is due to open in Brussels in November. Another site is planned for Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, in 2028. The model varies between locations, with Centre Pompidou providing works from its collection, expertise, and jointly developed programs rather than simply reproducing its Paris museum abroad. Almaty is pursuing a different model again. There will be no Pompidou branch here: ALMA remains an independent private museum. For now, the partnership can be seen quite literally – in a darkened gallery where Marclay’s screen keeps Almaty time. The museum says its international network will expand again...

Film Festival

Women, Cinema and Changing Kazakhstan at QYZQARAS 2026

From August 20 to 30, Almaty hosted the third edition of QYZQARAS, an independent international film festival dedicated to women directors’ voices and the female gaze in cinema. Held this year at the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture, the festival presented 21 feature films, including five notable works from Central Asia, among them Kristina Mikhailova’s widely discussed River Dreams. River Dreams had its world premiere in the Berlinale Forum Special section in 2026 and received the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in the Forum program. The screening marked an important milestone: the film became the first Kazakh documentary feature to premiere at the Berlinale. After a run of international festival appearances, the film returned home: on August 20, it opened QYZQARAS at the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture. River Dreams “This epic helped me believe in myself and feel at peace. I believe every frame,” Kristina said after the long applause that followed the final scene. Opening with a striking metaphysical orange river, River Dreams explores the inner lives of women in Kazakhstan. Constantly balancing between dream states and startlingly candid confession, the documentary immerses viewers in a wide range of themes – love, trauma, resistance, and survival – as women reflect on their pasts beside moving water. Grounded in a deeply humanist perspective, Mikhailova’s film presents tenderness as a sustained act of courage. Kristina’s presence behind the camera and the atmosphere of trust on set create an unpretentious portrait of contemporary Kazakhstan. It explores how the image of women is changing in this context, and how women directors themselves are shaping that change. Mikhailova begins with a simple question: “What kind of river are you?” From there, she builds the film around the personal stories of women of different ages and social backgrounds in Kazakhstan. This initial impulse encourages them to compare socially constructed ideals of femininity with what actually exists inside each of them. The most unexpected aspect of the film is the amount of humor. The protagonists’ wry, self-aware voices form an uncompromisingly honest agenda for contemporary Kazakh society: corruption, impunity, language, violence against women, and decolonization. “Decolonization is not only about one’s native language; it is about hierarchy. We look down on one another – it is a slave mentality: ‘I am better than you, so I will discriminate against you,’” says one of the young women featured in River Dreams. The director takes a transparent approach to the sensitive issue of language: in her view, what matters most is not which language we speak, but whether we are speaking about what truly matters. [caption id="attachment_56247" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Image: Azhar Utezhan[/caption] “The girls did not resist or struggle with the concept of radical vulnerability; it is a very simple idea,” Mikhailova said. The Aksai River, where Kristina grew up and where her father taught her as a child to be stronger, becomes an embodiment of the socio-political whirlpool into which women in Kazakhstan have been drawn over the past 30 years. Unpredictable weather and shifting water levels carry...

Gulzira Zhantemir

How a Ballerina from Kazakhstan Built a Career in German Ballet

When Gulzira Zhantemir arrived in Kiel, Germany, in 2017, she spoke virtually no German or English. Behind her were eight years at a ballet school in Almaty and three seasons at Astana Opera; ahead lay an unfamiliar country and theater system in which she would have to prove herself all over again. Nine years later, Zhantemir is completing this chapter as an established member of Ballett Kiel, with a repertoire encompassing classical and contemporary work. In 2023, the Gesellschaft der Freunde des Theaters in Kiel awarded her its Förderpreis in recognition of her work with the company. For Zhantemir, the path to this European career began much earlier, in Kazakhstan, and almost by chance. At the age of four, her mother enrolled her in a dance group at the local Palace of Schoolchildren, a type of extracurricular education center common across the former Soviet Union. Her first classes were not in ballet. Everything changed in the fourth grade, when teachers from the Alexander Seleznev Almaty Choreographic School came to her school looking for children suited to professional training. Her mother enjoyed watching ballet on television and encouraged her to try. At 10, Zhantemir entered the school and began eight years of professional ballet training, with daily classes and rehearsals alongside rigorous academic preparation. She graduated with honors in 2014 and won a gold medal at the Orleu International Ballet Competition that same year. After graduating, Zhantemir joined Astana Opera, the State Opera and Ballet Theatre in Kazakhstan’s capital. She had long wanted to move to Europe. Doing so meant leaving behind an established professional life and starting again with an audition. In 2017, Zhantemir successfully auditioned for Ballett Kiel, part of Theater Kiel, the municipal theater in this northern German city. The move also required her to adapt to a different way of working. “At Astana Opera, there was more time for rehearsals for each production and more space. Theater Kiel is much more compact, and we have one main stage, so we have to plan our time very precisely,” Zhantemir said. Even with those constraints, Kiel offered the professional variety Zhantemir had sought in Europe. “Working abroad gives you an incredible opportunity to train with guest choreographers and teachers from around the world and learn different contemporary and classical techniques,” she said. Outside the theater, other dancers from Kazakhstan and Ukrainian choreographer Yaroslav Ivanenko, who led Ballett Kiel for many years, helped her settle in while she learned German. Gradually, her list of roles grew beyond the classical repertoire. Zhantemir danced both central female roles in Giselle, Giselle herself and Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis. Her repertoire came to include Odette in Swan Lake and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She also appeared in West Side Story and contemporary productions. Her Kiel roles included Swanilda in Coppélia and Cinderella. With another company, she performed Kitri in Don Quixote. For a ballet dancer, the differences between these roles are significant. Kitri requires virtuosity and temperament, while Giselle calls for...