Stories We Inherit: Almaty Exhibition Explores Women’s Memory and Ancestral Knowledge

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ALMATY – An international exhibition exploring women’s heritage, ancestral knowledge and cultural memory through contemporary art opened at the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture in Almaty on Oct. 15, bringing together 21 artists and thinkers from Central Asia and other parts of the world.

Titled “Himoya: Matrilineal Energies, Oracular Kin,” the exhibition is curated by Natasha Ginwala and will run until April 4, 2027. It features newly commissioned works, existing projects and site-specific installations, alongside a research program, workshops and educational events.

The exhibition takes its name from the word “himoya,” which conveys ideas of protection, care and safeguarding vulnerability across several linguistic traditions, including Uzbek, Arabic, Azerbaijani and Sanskrit. Through sculpture, sound, installation and performance, participating artists explore how knowledge and traditions pass between generations, particularly through women and family relationships.

The project also examines how colonial histories, social repression and the loss of languages, rituals and ways of life have shaped cultural memory across Central Asia and beyond.

“For Tselinny, Himoya is the culmination of conversations that began back in 2021,” said Alima Kairat, the center’s artistic director. “Conversations about matrilineal memory, rituals, protection, inherited languages of shame and care that continue to live within us, even when we stop being aware of them.”

Kairat said these topics are deeply rooted in the experiences of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, where memory is transmitted not only through archives but also through the body, gestures, everyday practices and intergenerational relationships.

“Turning to ancestral knowledge, the exhibition invites us to see it not as evidence of the past, but as a living force capable of reinterpreting the present and opening up new horizons for the future,” she said.

Women’s stories and overlooked histories

Among the exhibition’s works is “Iron Mother” by Uzbek artist Aziza Kadyri, an interactive installation based on the story of her grandmother, Umida, one of the few women to oversee the construction of the Tashkent TV Tower. Umida later became its first director.

Despite her professional achievements, Umida’s personal recollections of the male-dominated power structures of Soviet Uzbekistan remained unpublished. Kadyri transforms this family history into an installation resembling a dismantled television studio and control room. Visitors take the position of a person operating a broadcast, gaining the ability to determine how Umida’s voice is heard. The work explores how women’s stories, long confined to family circles or excluded from official historical narratives, can gain a public platform.

Another featured project comes from Colombian artist Ana María Millán, who visited Almaty in March and conducted a role-play laboratory with local participants at Tselinny. The workshop used collaborative storytelling to develop characters, their abilities and scenarios that could be explored through choreography and motion capture.

The process is informing a new animated work in the format of a video game, connecting Kazakhstan and Colombia through protection, women’s autonomy, care and the reimagining of the monster. Rather than arriving with a completed project, Millán developed the work through collaboration with participants in Almaty, making the creative process itself part of the exhibition’s exploration of shared experience.

Sound, mythology and cultural connections

South Korean artist Haegue Yang presents “The Bear-Woman’s Story in the Sand Cave,” an audio installation originally created in 2009 and adapted for its presentation in Almaty.

With support from the Korean Cultural Center at the Embassy of South Korea in Kazakhstan, the work has been recorded in four languages: Kazakh, Russian, English and Koryo-mar, the language of ethnic Koreans in Kazakhstan. Local participants’ voices feature in the different versions.

The installation combines the Korean myth of Dangun with Japanese writer Kobo Abe’s 1962 novel “The Woman in the Dunes.” In Yang’s interpretation, a bear-woman lives in a dark cave with a tiger and must continuously remove sand to prevent the cave from being buried. Her endless labor, largely unnoticed by others, becomes a way to explore solitude, endurance, survival and invisible work.

Research conducted by Yang in Almaty and its surroundings, including visits to archaeological sites and ancient petroglyphs, informed the visual development of her new sculptures. The traditional Kazakh percussion instrument asatayak also served as a source of inspiration, with its form, symbolism and sound reflected in the works.

During her visit, Yang also went to the State National Academic Korean Theater of Musical Comedy, where she explored the history and culture of ethnic Koreans in Kazakhstan. This encounter contributed to the decision to incorporate local voices, including Koryo-mar speakers, into the audio installation.

An international dialogue on ancestral knowledge

The exhibition brings together artists including Ahmed Umar, Almagul Menlibayeva, Ariz Katki, Chitra Sasmita, Güzel Zakir, Jazgul Madazimova, Nara Beibit, Rajni Perera, Ritika Pandey, Umida Akhmedova, Yelaman Mukhtarhan, Zarina Mukanova and Zilola Saidova, among others. Drawing on Tengrian traditions, ancient Turkic mythology, spiritual cosmologies and forms of kinship, the exhibition considers artistic practice as a means of preserving memory and rethinking inherited narratives.

Its architectural and exhibition design, developed by Diogo Passarinho Studio, responds to the history of Tselinny’s building as a former Soviet cinema. The design reimagines the space as a setting for shared experience, collective imagination and non-imperial forms of cultural expression.

The exhibition is supported by the SÄR Foundation. Other partners include the Korean Cultural Center in Kazakhstan, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Geneva-based gallery FORA and the AMA Foundation.

Through its combination of contemporary artworks, research and community participation, the exhibition explores how women’s experiences, ancestral knowledge and cultural traditions continue to shape identities and creative practices across generations.

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