INDIRA DYUSSEBAYEVA

Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek is an independent curator and co-founder of Interntional Art Development Association (IADA), a non-profit organisation supporting and promoting contemporary art from Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Indira studied History of Art at University College London (UCL) and holds an MSc in Finance from Cass Business School, City University London. In her early career, she worked for several years in the financial services industry. With IADA, Dyussebayeva has organised numerous international projects. She co-curated the collateral exhibition of Kazakhstan, ONE STEP/PE FORWARD at the 55th Biennale of Venice (2013), as an initiative for the creation of the national pavilion of Kazakhstan. She curated the solo show of British-Israeli artist Zadok Ben-David, The Other Side of Midnight (2014), which was the first international exhibition at the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Together with her partners, she organised Protagonists, Invisible Pavilion, an artist residency for artists from Kazakhstan, during the 56th Biennale of Venice (2015). In addition, she has participated in curating projects in the non-profit sections of the Vienna Art Fair, Art Dubai, and Art 15.

Diana T. Kudaibergenova

Diana T. Kudaibergenova is a cultural and political sociologist. She is currently a Research Fellow in the Center of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University, Sweden. Her main research interest concerns the social theory of power. Kudaibergenova studies different intersections of power relations through realms of political sociology, with a particular focus on nationalising regimes and nationalism in the new states of post-soviet space, cultural sociology, gender studies, and socio-legal studies. She published her first book in January 2017, Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature. Elites and Narratives, exploring the ways national ideas and narratives were produced, contested and rewritten in the very new genre of Soviet literature in modern Kazakhstan. Her second book, currently in production, addresses the comparative political sociology of nation-building, power struggles and new political elites in post-Soviet states. Kudaibergenova’s work on socio-legal studies of citizenship, minorities, and nation- as well as state-building is connected to this aspect of her research. She also works on gender and contemporary art fields to test similar questions of power relations, agency, and power contestations in societies that go through tremendous socio-cultural transformations.

Almagul Menlibayeva

Video artist and photographer Almagul Menlibayeva holds an MFA from the Art and Theatre University of Almaty. She works primarily in multi-channel video, photography and mixed media installation and her work addresses such critical issues of post-Soviet modernity as social, economic, and political transformations in Central Asia, de-colonial re-imaginings of gender, environmental degradation, and Eurasian nomadic and indigenous cosmologies and mythologies. In conjunction with her solo exhibition ‘Transformation’ at the Grand Palais in Paris (France, 2016-2017), she was awarded the prestigious Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2017. Other awards include the ‘Daryn’ State Prize of Kazakhstan (1996), and the ‘Tarlan’ National Award of the Club of Maecenas of Kazakhstan (2003). She was also the Winner of the Grand Prix Asia Art at the II Biennial of Central Asia, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1995) and the Winner of the Main Prize of the International Film Festival Kino Der Kunst (2013) in Munich, Germany. Menlibayeva has gained international recognition by participating in: the Venice Biennale, Italy (2005, 2007, 2009, 2015); Sydney Biennale, Australia (2006, 2012); the Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2010); the Mediterranean Biennale, Israel (2010); the Moscow Biennale, Russia (2011, 2015); the Kiev Biennial, Ukraine (2013); the Daegu Photo Biennale (2016); and the Gangwon International Biennale, South Korea (2018). Selected solo exhibitions include: Videoart at Midnight #98: Almagul Menlibayeva, Berlin (2018); Transformation, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2016-2017); Union of Fire and Water, 56th Venice Biennial, Italy (2015); Transoxiana Dreams, Videozone, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (2014); An Ode for the Wastelands and Gulags, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2013); Daughters of Turan, Casal Solleric, Palma De Mallorca, Spain (2012); LATT: Europe at large #6, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (M HKA), Antwerp, Belgium (2010); Kissing Totems, Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York, USA (2008). Recent selected group exhibitions include: Haifa Museum, Israel (2018); Neues Museum in Nuremberg, Germany (2018, 2016); Astana State Museum, Kazakhstan (2018, 2016); Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, M HKA, Antwerp, Belgium (2017-2020, 2010); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Greece (2017).

Aigerim Ospanova

Aigerim Ospanova: Born 1991 in Astana, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Kazakhstan. Multimedia artist Ospanova Aigerim graduated with a BA from the Academy of Art in Almaty. Aigerim’ practice extends to installation, performance art, painting and video art. Selected exhibitions include: “India” in Almaty; “Beautiful Place Burabai” in Almaty; the open-air exhibition of young artists organized by the Union of artists of Almaty; “Always life” Central State Museum of Almaty; “Exhibition of the young artists”, contemporary art festival “Artbat Fest7”, Almaty; “Astana ArtFest”, Astana; “QWAS” bilocal transcultural exhibition, Zurich-Almaty; “Act of creation” contemporary art festival “Artbat Fest8”, Almaty; “Time and Astana: after future”, State Museum, Astana. Aigerim was invited to the symposiums: “Sacral folk songs” (Elabuga, Russia); “Images of Place and Time” (Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia); Art symposium “Made in Astana” (Astana, Kazakhstan); “Sheich Zayed Festival” (Abu-Dhabi, UAE). Also she participated in video project “Transformation” by Almagul Menlibaeva; in the video-performance “The Bitter Gift” by Askhat Akhmediyarov; in workshop on performance with Waldemar Tatarchuk (Labyrinth Gallery, Polland), 2017 Kazakhstan; and in workshop on performance with Roger Hill (UK) Almaty Art Center, 2017 Almaty Kazakhstan.

RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH

Dr. Rachel Rits-Volloch is a graduate of Harvard University with a BA degree in Literature and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. She wrote her dissertation on visceral spectatorship in contemporary cinema, focusing on the biological basis of embodiment. In 2016-2017, Rachel Rits-Volloch was Visiting Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” and the PhD program in Artistic Research. Rachel Rits-Volloch founded MOMENTUM in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney. MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in January 2011, and since that time has evolved into a non-profit global platform for time-based art, with headquarters at the Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to act as a bridge between international art communities, supporting artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide. MOMENTUM’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Program and Archive, an Education Program and Archive, and a growing Collection. Since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010, Rachel Rits-Volloch has curated or produced over 70 international exhibitions showing works by over 500 artists, in addition to ancillary education programming, artist residencies, and related projects. Born in Riga, USSR, Rachel Rits-Volloch is currently based in Berlin, having previously lived and worked in the US, UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Sydney.

Saule Suleimenova

Saule Suleimenova: Born 1970 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Lives and works in Kazakhstan. Saule Suleimenova graduated from the Kazakh State Academy of Architecture and Construction in 1996, and was awarded an MFA from the Kazakh National University of Arts in 2013. She has been a member of the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan since 1998. She works with mixed media, creating images and sculptures from plastic bags in a process she describes as ‘waste collage’. Residual Memory, her current project, revisits the traumatic history of Kazakhstan by recycling reproductions of little-known photo documents into collages made of waste. Still painful themes such as the Zheltoksan (the Kazakh youth riots in 1986), and the Asharshylyk (the colonial genocide resulting from Stalin’s Collectivization policies during 1932-1933), give her practice an edge of activism. Awards include: Fellowship of the President of Kazakhstan (1998); Laureate of the Shabyt, Zhiger and Tengri Umai awards; Laureate ‘For creative achievements’ in the №1 Choice of the Year, Kazakhstan, 2017; Shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2017; Nominated for the Singapore Art Prize 2017; Nominated to Prince Claus Foundation Art Prize 2016. Her selected exhibitions include: Somewhere in the Great Steppe, Contemporary Art from Kazakhstan, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2017-2018; Somewhere in the Great Steppe. Skyline, National Museum of Kazakhstan. Astana, 2017. Culture Summit 2017, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Dis/Possessed. A Question of Spirit and Money, Manifesta 10, Folium, Zurich, Switzerland, 2016; One Belt One Road, Federation of Women, Sotheby’s, Hong Kong; 56th Venice Biennale in the Why Self project (2015); 5th Moscow Contemporary Art Biennale in the Migrants project of RSGU (2013); ARTBATFEST Almaty contemporary art festival (2013, 2014, 2015); East of Nowhere, Foundation 107, Turin, Italy (2009); Kazakh: Paintings By Saule Suleimenova, Townsend Center, Berkeley University, USA, 2005.

Aliya de Tiesenhausen

Aliya de Tiesenhausen, PhD, is an independent scholar of Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asian art who was born in Kazakhstan and works in London. She is the author of Central Asia in Art: from Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics, I.B. Tauris, 2016. She received her doctoral degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, in 2010. She worked as an icon specialist at Christie’s London; assisted with the production of the film Kazakhstan Swings; taught theory seminars for the MA programme at the Courtauld Institute of Art; organised the Beyond Borat symposium on contemporary Kazakhstan culture; and co-convened the conferences Framing the Other: 30 Years after Orientalism at the Courtauld, and Russian Orientalism through Art Production and Education at the Cambridge Central Asia Forum. Dr de Tiesenhausen makes regular public presentations, including: The Curious Case of Kazakhstan – the Influential Role of Women in an Emerging Art Market at the Association for Art History Annual Conference (2017), and Contemporary Kazakhstani artists working abroad at the Central Asia Forum, Warwick (2018). She participated in numerous publications on these subjects, including guest editing the issue on art for the Cambridge Central Asia Reviews, Volume 1, Issue 2: pages 69-148, Cambridge Scientific Publishers, 2016. She contributed to The Eastern Connection: Depictions of Soviet Central Asia, Jérôme Bazin, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny and Piotr Piotrowski, eds.; Art beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe [1945-1989], Budapest – New York, Central European University Press, 2016. Dr. de Tiesenhausen compiled sections on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the ArtAsiaPacific Almanac 2010. She also wrote the Introduction to Treasures of Kazakhstan, exh. cat., London: Christie’s, 2010.