Almagul Menlibayeva

Menlibayeva has been exhibited internationally at the Sydney Biennale, the Venice Biennale, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, Queens Museum, Queens, and The Stenersen Museum, Oslo, among others.

Menlibayeva was born in 1969 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She obtained her MFA degree from Academy of Art and Theatre, Almaty in 1992. From 1987 to 1995, she was a member of the Almaty underground young artists group Green Triangle, and participated in its first underground exhibitions. She was a student at the private studio of Gani Bayanov from 1984 to 1985, and a student at The Palace of Pioneers run by artist Sergei Maslov from 1985 to 1987. Her educational background in the Soviet avant-garde school of Futurism allowed her to bridge the past and present, as well as tradition and innovation, in her creative journey.

Transoxiana Dreams explores the social, economical, and ecological issues surrounding the lives of the Araikum generation – the term used to call the people living in the vast region of the rapidly receding Aral Sea coastline. The deteriorating environment is caused by the radical irrigation policies of the former Soviet Union in the 1960s – between Soviet, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and southwestern Kazakhstan. A dreamy, surrealistic mixture of documentary and fantasy, Transoxiana Dreams explores the desertification through the eyes of a fisherman's daughter as the main protagonist. The girl's father encounters strange mythical female creatures during his journey as he ventures for new fishing grounds – scarce leftover of what once was Aral Sea. The mythical creatures – derived from Greek's mythological figure, the Centaur, was chosen as according to legend, upon their initial meeting, the ancient Greeks mistook the nomads of Transoxianian Steppes on their horses as mythological. Transoxiana Dreams won the main award at Kino der Kunst 2013 – an international film festival hosted in Munich, Germany.

The visual of this 11:35 minute video installation is composed of alternating black-and-white and color frames. Milk for Lambs straddles the line between contemporary Kazakhstan and its mythically infused historic ritual. Set against the vast landscape of the steppe, it traces what's left of Tengriism – where the skygod Tengri is the main deity and his wife, Umai, the all-nurturing mother goddess of the Turkic Siberians. The film follows the former nomads as they celebrate the festivities held in honor of Tengri and Umai, and the accompanying rituals. Milk for Lambs won KfW Audience Award of the Videonale 13: Festival for Contemporary Art in Kunstmuseum, Bonn.

Kissing Totems is the first solo exhibition Almagul Menlibayeve held in the United States, and the title of the solo exhibition is one of her recent works in 2008 with the same name. In her film, “Kissing Totems”, it is about a set of surrealist actions and impossible encounters happened on the territory of a deserted factory from the Soviet era. The industrial ruin of Communism has become a stage, a kind of bird, also a totem and peris which mark the transition of dream-narrative. By invoking confounding feelings and curiosity, the artist asks audiences to watch the film through the eyes of a little girl, the audiences observe the unbelievable thing by contemplative detachment. When the little girl walks through the past symbol of Communism, from camera to industrial materialism of industry. At the same time, the little girl feels comfy with two symbol systems. Through her imagine gaze, the post-communism becomes another totemic myth that being occupied by ideologies and the newly revived beliefs.

One the Road is one of Almagul Menlibayeve's artworks blends in poetry into video and performance that being presented in a unique setting as brings topic of Islamic cultural tradition and contemporary art together. The following is her own artist statement towards On the Road:

• 2025: I Understand Everything, Almaty Museum of Arts, Kazakhstan • 2018: Inverted Worlds, Neues MuseumVerkehrte Welt • 2018: Videoart at Midnight #98, Berlin #98: Almagul Menlibayeva • 2018: Green, Yellow, Red, TSE Art Destination • 2016–2017:Transformation, 11, Grand Palais • 2015: 56th Venice Biennial, Collateral project Union of Fire and Water, 11 video installation Fire talks to me, commissioned by Yarat Art Foundation, Palaco Barbaro, Venice, Italy • 2014: Transoxiana Dreams, Videozone, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany • 2013: Empire of the Memory, Ethnographic Museum, Warsaw, Polland • 2013: An Odd tor the Wastelands and Gulags, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria • 2012: Daughters of Turan, Casal Solleric, La Palma De Mallorca, Spain • 2011: Exodus, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany • 2010: Les rêves perdus d'Aral, Galerie Albert Benamou, Paris, France • 2010: Transoxiana Dreams, Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York, NY; My Silk Road to you, Tengri-Umai Gallery, Almaty, Kazakhstan • 2010: Lonely at the Top, Europe at large #6 (Refrains from the Wasteland), Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (M HKA), Antwerp, Belgium EUROPE AT LARGE • 2009: Daughters of Turan, Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York, NY • 2009: Exodus, Tengri-Umai Gallery, Almaty, Kazakhstan; Kurban, Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York, NY; 2008 Kissing Totems, Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York, NY • 2007: On the Road, Galerie Davide Gallo, Berlin, Germany