The Kazakh Designers Telling Stories of Their Nomadic Heritage

The summers I spent in Almaty form some of my sweetest childhood memories. I was born in Kazakhstan’s former capital (and still its largest city) and moved to Estonia in 1986, at age three, returning every school break into my teenage years. Once I relocated to the United States in the early 2000s, the frequent visits stopped. In my preliminary years overseas, I handled bouts of nostalgia by conjuring up those memories: eating ice cream below the mosaicked swallows of Qarlygash Cafe (which means swallow in Kazakh) near my grandmother’s apartment, or catching rare glimpses of felt-covered yurts in the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains from my grandfather’s Zhiguli sedan.

Decades in the US have since turned my Kazakh past into something distant, but as I’ve grown older—and watched my loved ones in Almaty age, too—I’ve yearned to regain a link to my origins. So this year, I returned, hoping to reconnect with the landscapes and motifs of Kazakhstan that I still hold dear, and to meet the crop of young Kazakh artists who, like me, are increasingly examining their own identities through them.

Many of these artisans are building their practice in Almaty, the country’s de facto economic and cultural heart, where remnants of its Soviet past shoulder neo-nomad restaurants on leafy boulevards. Yet despite Almaty’s urban spread, the steppe is never too far away—nor is its indelible imprint on the Kazakh psyche. For millennia, the Great Steppe, a vast landscape of grasslands, deserts, and rolling fields that covers much of Kazakhstan, was home to roaming Turkic tribes, known by the 15th century as the Kazakh Khanate. They raised livestock, changed pastures with the seasons, and used portable yurts as shelter.

Beyond a space to live, the yurt was a sacral structure, based on the belief that the universe itself was shaped like a giant yurt. In the last two centuries, this identity became systematically suppressed: Collectivization, forced settlements, and the Soviet-induced famine of the 1930s killed and displaced over a third of the Kazakh population. Former nomads lost much of their lands, animals, and way of life.

Since gaining independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has gone through a tumultuous period of change. In the early years, many of the artefacts I remembered from my childhood, like Qarlygash’s mosaics, were dismantled. Felt—used for everything from clothing to rugs to insulation for yurts, and already hard to find in Soviet times—gave way to Chinese imports, and then, as purchasing power improved, to brands like Prada and Gucci.

For Almaty-based fashion designer Alina Aitzhanova, the steppe is not just a landscape, but a space where her ancestors' cosmology was formed. Aitzhanova launched her clothing label Al Basty to infuse avant-garde sensibilities into the local streetwear scene and to put Kazakh mystical culture on the global stage. Sculptural pieces with dramatic cuts and spiky hemlines serve as “modern armor for the soul,” yet are accessible enough that “anyone wearing it could feel like they’re a part of our legend,” says Aitzhanova.

In the mythology of the steppe, sun, moon, wind, and Tengri—the supreme deity representing the boundless sky—possess as much character and will as living humans and their ancestor spirits. This nomadic worldview, known as Tengrism, remains deeply embedded in Kazakh culture through traditions like zheti ata (the practice of knowing seven generations of ancestors) and Nauryz, a Spring equinox celebration of resilience over winter. “To me, the steppe is a powerful image,” says Aitzhanova. “Harsh yet generous, with unhewn forms and an endless gaze that sees everything.”

Aitzhanova's brand’s name, Al Basty, comes from the word for an ancient Turkic shapeshifting female spirit. When Aitzhanova was growing up, it was used as an epithet to scold children, something akin to ‘hooligan’ or ‘devil.’ But in earlier myths, Al Basty was described as a hearth deity and a protector of women in childbirth. “Many Kazakhs, myself included, didn't even know who she really was,” says Aitzhanova. The realization led her to investigate which other Kazakh mythical figures might be misunderstood. Today, Aitzhanova, who comes from a long lineage of artisans and felt masters, interprets Al Basty and other myths into pieces like the Bayur liver bag or a white wool coat inspired by the sacred swan of Kazakh legends, Aqqu. “I want to share modern Kazakh fashion with the world, conveying the poetic nature, elegance, and ruggedness of our worldview,” says Aitzhanova.

One day, I catch a ride to Tuzdybastau, a township on the eastern outskirts of Almaty where city clamor gives way to quietude and space. Here to visit artist Laila Zharkyn in her private studio, I step through a green metal gate, noticing how remarkably similar it is to the entrance at my first family home in Almaty For the past six years, Zharkyn has been reinventing handmade felt, the practice of bonding wool fibers together with water, soap, and hand friction, or with the help of a special needle.

“Felt carpets were always in our house, and a century ago, women still knew how to make them,” Zharkyn tells me as we walk up the stairs past rolls of colored sheep wool into her spacious workshop. These heirlooms, known as tekemets, reflected the full spectrum of steppe values, depicting sacral elements such as koshkar muiz (‘ram horns’ in Kazakh), the foremost symbol of wealth, abundance, and fertility. Many families have tekemets spread on the floor or hung on the walls during winter, but the felting knowledge is disappearing quickly.

Zharkyn felt the call to bring the felting craft back as an art form. Her large-scale panels in an ethno-minimalist style—blending uncluttered modern lines with traditional symbolism—have migrated from family bedrooms into art galleries and interior design lookbooks. In 2024, she created a monumental tekemet made of pixels for the Central State Museum, a work she refers to as “time code enciphered in felt”, an attempt to grasp the depth of tradition where every pixel is at once a dream and an echo of the past. Through felt, Zharkyn explores such fundamental parts of Kazakh ethos as dastarkhan, the philosophy of welcoming guests over a traditional spread including beshbarmak, the centerpiece dish of slow-boiled meat over flat noodles, snacks like baursaq fried dough and salted dried kurt cheese, with a copious amount of tea. (The artist’s work is available at boutiques like Korkem or in her appointment-only studio.)

The current craft revival among herself and her peers is driven, in part, by urban fatigue, says Zharkyn. “Our nomadic soul demands returning to our roots,” she tells me. “People are tired of the cities and are missing the steppe. The need for wide [open] spaces is in our blood.” Zharkyn took on the mission to keep felting alive, teaching her sister and nieces the practice, too. “What will remain after us?” she ponders. “When we know our history, we’re firmly rooted in the ground.”

Back in the city center, I can’t help but notice new Soviet-style mosaics adorning cafe interiors, storefronts, and street signs. During the Soviet era, these monumental decorative panels appeared at metro stations, sports stadiums, school facades, and on the sides of residential blocks. In the absence of advertising, mosaics communicated and reinforced Soviet values like space exploration and heroic factory work. But in Central Asia, far from the empire’s center, local artists sometimes used the mosaics to deviate from the official agenda.

While many of the original mosaics in Almaty have been damaged or destroyed, a new boom in Soviet paraphernalia is underway today. It’s driven not by ideology, but by Gen Z, a generation that didn’t experience Soviet realities, yet grew up surrounded by its visual aesthetic. Internet cultures like Sovietwave and a craving for analog, retro experiences further fuel this interest. One example of that can be seen at Aqqu, a cafe from the 1960s in a green central Almaty square that reopened last year. Inside, I find a packed house, mosaics lining the walls, and hits from my childhood like wafers with condensed milk.

To better understand this phenomenon, I meet up with Daria Zaitova, founder of Art Oskolok, a cozy mosaic studio filled with books, plants, and stones of various sizes in a three-story building a couple of blocks away from Aqqu. Zaitova fell in love with the meditative process of creating mosaics using natural stone, smalt, and glass tile. “The majority of Almaty’s urban landscape emerged in the 20th century,” she says. “Part of Soviet Modernism and monumental art, mosaics have become the cultural code of the city. They’re highly visible in the streets; it is impossible to overlook them.”

I ask Zaitova what may be behind the current revival of interest. “People have grown tired of uniform visual styles,” she explains. “Mosaics possess a powerful character; they’re durable, textured, and vibrant, making modern materials look less expressive by comparison.” Art Oskolok runs daily mosaic masterclasses, and the Asif Khan-designed Tsellinny Center of Contemporary Culture, opened last year, carries the brand's gift sets. Their works portraying beloved Almaty symbols—like the storied late-modernism Kazakhstan Hotel, frequented by dignitaries and pop icons since 1977, or the spectacular mountains looming over the city—also appear at numerous restaurants and streets across town. To my delight, swallows are now soaring once again inside the newly reopened Qarlygash Cafe, all thanks to Art Oskolok.

On my last day, I meander through the Golden Square, a five-block area in the heart of historic Almaty where the city’s best restaurants, boutiques, and promenades converge, with another visit to Aqqu for one last helping of trubochki, a waffle roll filled with nostalgia and soft meringue cream. Then, I make my way past pedestrian-only alleyways I used to play in as a child to the Union of Artists building: Inside a quiet seventh-floor studio, I’m greeted by Altynay Baizhan, founder of Altyn Ceramics. Baizhan’s grandfather, Issatay Issabayev, was a legendary Kazakh painter and graphic artist who worked in this very room from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

Baizhan studied to become a ballerina but fell in love with ceramics for its expressive freedom. When she started her practice a decade ago, ceramics were not yet popular in Kazakhstan, and there were no women in the craft. “The belief was that the pottery wheel is not a woman’s place,” she tells me. She took it as a challenge and studied abroad in Spain, where she learned that throwing clay is all about the technique. In extracurricular classes, Baizhan had a license to sculpt whatever she wanted. Her hands, though, kept making forms that explored her identity.

Today, the maker creates large-format art objects that examine ideas of roots, home, and family. Her most poignant work centers around the female nomadic warriors. Baizhan tells me that Kazakh women were traditionally the equals of men. “Our national dish, beshbarmak, was created because the [the woman were] busy,” she laughs. “She placed the meat on the stove, jumped on her horse, and galloped away to attend to her business.”

Through works that depict the female saddle her ancestors would have used, or a traditional amulet worn by women that she has reimagined as a supersized turquoise and red wall panel, Baizhan brings to light this powerful image at a time when gender-based violence remains one of Kazakhstan’s most critical social issues. For Baizhan, clay is a dialogue. And it’s not a simple one; she explains that trusting this medium is key. “We are not simple as a people, either,” she adds. “The cracks that remain are the marks of the difficult paths we went through.”

Last year, Baizhan created a multimedia installation, Saparlau (‘the path’), for the “Gallery Without Walls” project, in which art exhibits appear in unexpected public spaces like subways and movie theaters. In this work, a slatted shanyrak circle hangs from the ceiling. This wooden crown of the yurt forms its structural foundation and is a key pillar of Kazakh identity, considered a threshold where the spirits of the sky meet those of the family’s ancestors. Under Baizhan’s shanyrak, a spiral of ceramic swallows and poppies soars toward the sky. “A swallow always finds a way home,” she tells me. By the end of my time in Almaty, I feel I have moved one step closer to mine.