Central Asian Art - 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...

Venice Biennale

Kyrgyzstan Pavilion Brings Nomadism to the 2026 Venice Biennale

Central Asia is increasingly visible on the contemporary art map, and few events carry more symbolic weight than the Venice Biennale, often described as the Olympics of the art world. In recent years, Kazakhstan’s privately funded art scene and Uzbekistan’s state-backed art scene have often led the region’s international push. This year, Kyrgyzstan is is determined not to lag behind. The country’s pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale marks its second dedicated national participation. Kyrgyzstan first appeared in this format in 2022 with Gates of Turan, a state-commissioned installation by Firouz FarmanFarmaian on the Venetian island of Giudecca that drew on nomadic heritage and local craft traditions. At the center of the 2026 pavilion is Alexey Morosov, a Bishkek-born artist who has lived and worked in Italy for years. He chose the former church of Santa Caterina at Convitto Foscarini, in Venice’s Cannaregio district, as the setting for BELEK, the Kyrgyz word for “gift.” Curated by art historian Geraldine Leardi, the exhibition reflects on water and Kyrgyzstan’s tradition of generosity. The works are in close dialogue with the space that hosts them. The former church, founded in the 14th century, still carries traces of a fire during restoration work in the 1970s. “You can almost smell the burn,” Morosov said at the opening, standing in the presbytery. “For me, it’s very important to pay attention to the genius loci, the spirit of the place,” the artist added. “In a place like this, you have to understand precisely how to use space as a tool, while also respecting it.” Artistic Nomadism Born in Bishkek in 1974, Morosov was trained in the traditions of classical Western art and developed a deep interest in Greek and Roman archaeology, Renaissance painting, and medieval architecture. At 17, he began traveling. He has lived and worked in Lucca, Tuscany, since 2015. “In his practice, the artist naturally bridges Eastern and Western cultures,” Leardi said. “By birth, the original content of his art is Central Asian. His training and artistic education, however, developed in a Western direction.” BELEK, she said, represents a synthesis of those backgrounds. Morosov himself frames it in terms of nomadism. " It's my land, my blood, because my family is originally from Kyrgyzstan, from the middle of the 18th century. I’d describe my mode as meta-nomadismo," he said. “And in my mind, Kyrgyz tradition, Kyrgyz soul, are absolutely in harmony with the Italian conception of art and style of life.” Leardi came to the project as a Byzantinist with no previous deep engagement with Central Asian art. She describes her research for the pavilion as its own kind of journey, traveling to Kyrgyzstan via Mongolia and Korea, “like Marco Polo,” she said, laughing. What she found was a country of extreme contrasts. “It’s not a quiet land. You feel a lot when you’re there. It’s very challenging,” she said. Her task was to “find the channels, find the paths to communicate in the right way between the country and Venice, because there are...

Kazakh Art

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken: The Art of Saule Suleimenova

“I’m a very emotional person,” says artist Saule Suleimenova with a bright, open laugh from her home studio in Almaty. Widely recognized as one of the most significant Kazakh artists working today, Suleimenova’s spontaneity and passion emerge clearly as the artist lightens up when talking about the joy and necessity of making work, when she excavates memories of the early days of making art, or when suddenly, she grows gloomy, remembering some of the most painful moments in the history of her country. Behind her back stands a large canvas, where translucent elements, almost resembling stained glass from a distance, slowly reveal themselves as fragments of discarded plastic bags fused together through heat and a whole lot of patience. Born in 1970, Suleimenova has developed a practice that spans painting, drawing, photography, and public art, consistently navigating the delicate and often hard to define boundary between personal memory and collective history: “I feel my personal life can’t be detached from politics and everything that happens around me,” she says, embodying, in a way, a motto from the seventies: “the personal is political.” Suleimenova was an early member of the Green Triangle Group, an experimental artist collective known for its avant-garde and punk-influenced art, which emerged during the Perestroika era and the collapse of the USSR, playing a significant role in revolutionizing contemporary art in Kazakhstan. Today, she is working mostly with archives, vernacular imagery, and the visual language of contemporary urban space. In her work, she investigates how narratives are formed, distorted, and even rewritten over time, particularly within the historical and political context of Kazakhstan. An example is her ongoing series, Cellophane Paintings, composed entirely from used plastic bags, transforming everyday waste into luminous, layered pictorial fields that hold together subjects as vast as socio-political trauma, from the Kazakh famine of 1930–1933, human rights violations, Karlag, one of the largest Gulag labor camps, and the Uyghur genocide. Those heavy themes are associated with some that are more intimate: family members, flowers, and cityscapes. Suleimenova is currently participating in the Union of Artists at the Center of Modern Culture Tselinny in Almaty (15 January – 19 April 2026), curated by Vladislav Sludsky, an exhibition reflecting on artistic partnerships as systems of survival in a region where art historically survived through shared spaces and personal alliances between artists, rather than institutional support. The Times of Central Asia spoke to Suleimenova about memory, material, and the ways personal experience and political history converge in her art. [caption id="attachment_42718" align="aligncenter" width="2500"] From the series, One Step Forward[/caption] TCA: Your recent work at the Bukhara Biennial, Portraits of the people of Bukhara, was made from polyethylene bags collected by the community itself. Can you tell me how your work on this project took shape? Suleimenova: From the beginning, the work was meant to be collaborative with local artists or artisans rather than something already finished and brought from outside. I decided to collaborate with a folk ensemble of Bukhara women - the retired performers...

Kazakh Art

Beyond the Yurt: Rethinking Nomadism in Kazakh Contemporary Art

At a moment when Kazakhstan is building new cultural institutions and asking bigger questions about what contemporary art should do, one curator has been quietly learning how power, taste, and narrative are shaped inside major museums. Akmaral Kulbatyrova, the first representative of Kazakhstan to receive the U.S.-based ArtTable Fellowship, spent 2025 working in the Exhibitions and Curatorial Projects Department at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, gaining rare inside access to how global exhibitions are conceived and positioned. Her work sits at the intersection of institutional practice and cultural repair, focused on reframing nomadic culture, Central Asian heritage, and Kazakh craft not as static tradition but as a current language. Akmaral’s experience links ambition and execution, showing how local histories can enter international spaces without being flattened. In this interview with The Times of Central Asia, we asked her what comes next. TCA: Nomadic imagery has become central to Kazakhstan’s national identity since independence. How are contemporary artists reshaping these symbols, and why does that matter for how the country sees itself today? AK: Kazakh contemporary artists briefly challenged Kazakh art in early avant-garde experiments in the 1960s. However, it stopped because of the huge presence of Socialist Realism, which was one of the movements where symbols like horses and yurts prevailed. Most of the contemporary artists reshape not the symbols; they reimagine nomadic culture, contextualizing pre-Soviet culture through researching how it changed over time. Many artists look back to pre-Soviet nomadic practices to explore how these traditions were disrupted by colonial and Soviet policies, yet continue to influence Kazakh identity today. By using installation, performance, and video, they move beyond decoration and folklore to show nomadism as a living culture rather than a museum image or symbols. This matters because it helps Kazakhstan see itself not through simplified national symbols, but as a society shaped by change, cultural mixing, and an ongoing negotiation between past and present. [caption id="attachment_42899" align="aligncenter" width="1536"] Qyz Zhibek, designed by Nikolai Vladimirovich Tsivchinsky and Moldakhmet Syzdykovich Kenbaev, 1971; image: TCA[/caption] TCA: Nomadism now circulates widely in pop culture, often detached from its historical meaning. Why does contemporary art provide a more critical way to examine what nomadic identity represents? AK: It’s typical that symbolic images prevail in pop culture, especially for countries that have not experienced a long artistic tradition. It is one of the ways to be acknowledged by the privileged cultures through the symbols that are easy to recognize and quickly signal national identity. In Kazakhstan, these images became important after independence, as they cover the main question of cultural uniqueness after colonial influence. Contemporary art takes slower and more contextual approaches rather than easy recognition. That’s why most modern scholars criticize symbolic language and would like to see art that explores unresolved histories and how nations were challenged or used their experience to construct their identity. [caption id="attachment_42900" align="aligncenter" width="750"] Anvar Musrepov, IKEA KZ; image courtesy of the Aspan Gallery[/caption] TCA: Many artists use nomadic motifs with irony rather...

Uzbek Art

Mapping the Inner Landscape: An Interview with Oyjon Khayrullaeva

In recent years, a new generation of Uzbek artists has begun to reshape how culture, history, and identity are visually narrated. Among them is Oyjon Khayrullaeva, whose practice moves fluidly between photography, digital collage, and large-scale public installations. Born after independence and largely self-trained outside formal art institutions, Khayrullaeva works with inherited visual languages such as Islamic ornament and traditional textiles, reassembling them into contemporary forms that speak to the present moment. Her recent project for the Bukhara Biennial, called “Eight Lives,” marks a turning point in this exploration. Installed in the public and historical spaces of the ancient city, the work consists of monumental mosaic organs that connect physical vulnerability with emotional states and collective memory. Through the human body, Khayrullaeva maps experiences of anxiety, healing, spirituality, and social pressure, transforming ornament into anatomy and architecture into inner landscape. The Times of Central Asia spoke with the artist to trace how Eight Lives emerged, how collaboration with mosaic masters shaped its final form, and how audiences in Uzbekistan are responding to seeing contemporary art in public spaces. TCA: Can you tell me about your beginnings as an artist? Did you always want to become one? Khayrullaeva: From early childhood, my parents noticed that there was something a bit unusual about me. My father has always called me - and still does - an “alien,” because I’m probably the only person in my family who chose a creative path. No one else in my family has been involved in art, at least not for the past seven generations. I was always a creative child, but I never imagined that I would become an artist. As a child, I tried many things; I went to music school, studied piano, and attended various creative clubs. Still, the idea of pursuing art professionally never crossed my mind. Becoming an artist was, in many ways, an unexpected turn in my life. For a very long time, honestly, until around the age of 24, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do or what my profession would be. I was never certain about it. So yes, life is an interesting thing. You never really know where it’s going to lead you. TCA: Your artistic journey began with photography before evolving into digital collage. How did your early work in photography shape the way you now approach layering, texture, and composition in your digital pieces? Khayrullaeva: When I was around 17 or 18, I became interested in photography. At that time, I didn’t have a camera, so I was shooting with my phone. For my birthday, I was given some money, and I decided to use it to buy a camera. My father added a bit more, and I bought my very first one. It was an incredible feeling taking photos, holding the camera, and shooting. Mobile photography and working with a camera are completely different experiences, and that difference brought me so much joy. I remember the pure pleasure of photographing everything...