Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture opens on 5 September 2025 in a new, permanent venue, the Soviet-era former Tselinny cinema building, which has undergone a major transformation under the direction of British architect Asif Khan.
The Tselinny Center’s inaugural exhibitions and installations are complemented by a discursive programme of lectures, discussions, book launches, family workshops and roundtables, as well as a series of events under the title Barsakelmes, which is grounded in the nomadic, performative character of Kazakh culture.
The Tselinny Center provides an unprecedented international platform for artists in Almaty and the wider Central Asia region. Two exhibitions will run concurrently to the opening programme: an architectural exhibition exploring the transformation of Tselinny from a Soviet-era cinema to a multifunctional arts space, From Sky to Earth: Tselinny by Asif Khan, curated by historian and curator of architecture, Markus Lähteenmäki; and Documentation: Imagination of Central Asia on the Map of Contemporary Art, an archival exhibition curated by Asel Rashidova exploring the Tselinny Documentation project, a digital data set that collects and gives public access to archives of Central Asia from 1985.
Barsakelmes
Orta 1, Orta 3, Tselinny Centre of Contemporary Culture
5 September — 7 December
Barsakelmes is the name of a forgotten island in the now-dry Aral Sea, which serves as a reminder of a man-made catastrophe – the gradual drying of the sea under Soviet rule – that destroyed a whole ecosystem and erased the livelihoods of entire communities. Literally translated as ‘if one goes there, one won’t return,’ Barsakelmes denotes a type of colonial memory that is hard to heal or undo.
Tselinny Center’s opening programme takes this as its focus, geographically and conceptually, through a performance, titled Barsakelmes, which is a contemporary reinterpretation of a Central Asian legend in which the divine power of music drives out evil and saves people from numerous calamities. The performance reimagines the legend as a modern critique of our understanding of “crises” and evil spirits and is at once an artistic reflection, a ritual, and an appeal to collective memory.
Through sounds and imagery, a dialogue between past and present and the contemplation of age-old challenges and immense hope for a better outcome, it urges us to ask an important question — is it possible to return from a colonial past? The performance is not only an attempt to hear what has been forgotten but also an act of brave rethinking — a hope that the place of no return, Barsakelmes, can become a point of new beginning: a ritual song and a hopeful artistic revelation about healing the traumas of the colonial history. The path to curing is possible — through a collective effort to “pacify” evil spirits, to send them back to the depths of the sea, where they came from. Here, Barsakelmes is not a place of fear, but a story of hope.
The resynthesis and reimagining of Barsakelmes is a collaboration between the Tselinny Center creative team and the Kazakh independent music label qazaq indie collective, featuring artists SAMRATTAMA, Балхаш снится (Balkhash snitsya), dudeontheguitar, Steppe Sons, lovozero, Zere and Saadet Türköz, as well as two female Kazakh visual artists: Gulnur Mukazhanova and Dariya Temirkhan. Their installations, created specifically for Tselinny Center, are standalone works that engage in dialogue with other participants’ practices during the performance.
Photo by Jacopo Salvi. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia; Right: Dariya Temirkhan, Aidalalda (Somewhere), digital collage.
Courtesy the artist
Gulnur Mukazhanova (b. 1984, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan), whose practice is influenced by Kazakh textile traditions and addresses identity and the transformation of traditional Kazakh values in the age of globalisation, presents a site-specific new commission centred on the concept of portals.
Historically, in Central Asian culture, it was believed that the spirits of ancestors occupied the threshold of people’s homes — specifically the traditional yurt’s frame. On the other hand, the entrance, a portal, is a grounding element of earthiness, the basis on which everything rests. In this case, the frame of the portal is something sacred, where we were born: our origin.
Mukazhanova’s new commission Bosağa – Transition. The Weave of Ancestral Memory is a large-scale, felted portal installation. Rising from the hexagonal base, six felted portals form a sacred space for ritual performance. The external side of the installation is felted from the intense colours that spread throughout the surface, carrying the pulsating energy of each colour. These gradually interflow into the internal part of the purely defined oneness of a single hue: white. This one colour, which contains the spectrum of all colours, creates the feeling of wholeness and divine presence. The symbolism of white in Kazakh ornaments is connected to both birth and death; this interior of the installation creates space for transformation, and an opportunity for rebirth.
Dariya Temirkhan (b. 2000), one of a new generation of Kazakh artists, works across collage, film and installation. Her newly commissioned video work, Who guards your dreams (2025), is based on a series of watercolours of snakes and dragons and will be projected onto the building’s sgraffito, originally created by artist Evgeny Sidorkin (1930-1982), which has been restored during its transformation. Temirkhan’s work is based on a Kazakh legend about dragons, in this case, those which have been water spirits, and it immerses viewers in a world of fragments where Temirkhan’s associative rendering forges new connections between ideas.
The Kazakh independent music label qazaq indie will conduct a performative element of the Barsakelmes project at Tselinny at regular intervals until the beginning of December 2025. Performances are led by SAMRATTAMA, the music project of Kazakh artist Samrat Irzhassov, along with collective members spoken-word project Балхаш снится (Balkhash snitsya), singer dudeontheguitar, folk band Steppe Sons and sound artist lovozero; as well as Zere, a Kyrgyz singer and songwriter, and Saadet Türköz, an internationally-renowned experimental vocal artist.
Digital dataset Documentation, Tselinny Center
Documentation: Imagination of Central Asia on the Map of Contemporary Art Capsule, Tselinny Centre of Contemporary Culture 5 September – 7 December
Documentation: Imagination of Central Asia on the Map of Contemporary Art invites us to explore, or remember, the life of contemporary art in Central Asia at the turn of the millennium, focusing on its perception within the region and on the global, predominantly Western, art scene. This time period in Central Asian art was marked by the formation of a unique contemporary language, the search for new landmarks, polemics with new and old centres, and its position in relation to them.
The narrative follows the form and logic of the collection of Tselinny Center’s Documentation project: an online research dataset of information on Central-Asian contemporary art since 1985, also incorporating a public programme of lectures, research seminars, and discussions. Non-linear, fragmented, and mobile, the exhibition, curated by Asel Rashidova, conveys the simultaneous disunity and integrity of the past and brings it into the present. Interactive and discussion-based, the exhibition conceives of the archive as an open, collaborative platform for artists and researchers to preserve and study the past.
The exhibition includes works of art and accompanying materials: video and photo documentation, sketches, curatorial and art criticism texts, and news articles from different periods of Kazakhstani contemporary art scene.
From Sky to Earth: Tselinny by Asif Khan
Orta 1, Tselinny Centre of Contemporary Culture
5 September – 31 May
Curated by Markus Lähteenmäki, this architectural exhibition explores the transformative journey of Tselinny Center’s reconstruction by architect Asif Khan, showcasing the dialogue between history, innovation, and sustainability. Through an engaging blend of models, photographs, interactive digital displays, and curated artifacts from the original building, visitors will experience the evolution of a space that has served and evolved as a cultural landmark.
Other events and performances in 2025
Beyond the opening activities, Tselinny’s programme for autumn 2025 include an inclusive
performance by Deistvie Bukvalno Laboratory, the first inclusive theatre laboratory in Central
Asia; and the Histories of Tselinny film programme, offering alternative trajectories of film
history and centring Tselinny’s past as cinema venue; as well as an extensive learning
programme for adults, families and children and a presentation of publications such as
Kulshat Medeuova’s “Baikonur vs Baikonyr” and a new edition of Madina Tlostanova’s
Decoloniality of Knowledge, Being and Sensing (2020). For a full list of projects taking place
throughout 2025, visit here.
Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale, 2022. Credit: Tselinny center
Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale: Rites of Eternal Wind
Tselinny Centre of Contemporary Culture
7 May – 28 June 2026
Initiated by the Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture, the Triennale is dedicated to
contemporary forms of sound art, performative listening practices, experimental and avantgarde
music, oral genres, and much more. The second edition of the Triennale is curated by
the team of Stas Shärifulla, also known as HMOT, an artist-researcher based in Basel working
with sound and decoloniality, curator Madina Sadybekova and poet Anuar Duisenbinov. The
updated conceptual framework of the new edition is rooted in the understanding that Central
Asian, Turkic, North Asian, and many other cultures in the broader region are fundamentally
auditory, with oral and listening traditions historically taking precedence over written ones.
Approximately 20 artists, predominantly from Central and North Asia, the Middle East, and
Southeast Asia, will take part. The curatorial text and full list of participants can be found
online korkut.tselinny.org.
About Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture
The Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture is a regional institution whose mission is to
support and strengthen the local intellectual and artistic community by building a dialogue in
Kazakhstan and, more broadly, Central Asia. Open reflection and critical discussions on
Tselinny’s platform bring together contemporary artists, researchers, and scientists. The
center was founded in 2018 by Kazakh businessman and philanthropist Kairat Boranbayev.
Biographies
Asif Khan MBE is a British architect and multi-disciplinary artist. Current projects include
the Museum of the Incense Road, Al-Ula; the Barbican Art Centre Renewal, London; the New
Museum of London and the 2025 exhibition Cartier at the V&A. He is a participating artist in
the Islamic Arts Biennale 2025, Jeddah. Khan designed the UK pavilion at the Astana Expo
2017, Kazakhstan. He was awarded an MBE for “Services to Architecture” (2017), and the
FX award for outstanding contribution to Architecture (2024). His interests are in sensory
experience and identity, utilising aesthetics, ritual and new conceptions of structure. He
considers each project as “bridges leading to a new world, and a new self.”
Markus Lähteenmäki, PhD is a Finnish historian and curator of art and architecture. His
work as a curator has explored various aspects of creative processes of architecture and the
power of display. Recent exhibitions include Planetarium: Oleg Kudryashov and Peter Märkli
presented by Alexander Brodsky (gta Exhibitions, 2018) and the installation Instruments of
Occupation: Sounding the Helsinki Archipelago with artists Daniel Dubowitz and Tuomas
Toivonen (National Archives of Finland, 2023), while other shows curated by him, for
institutions such as Swiss Architecture Museum and Hauser & Wirth, have been featured
among others by Art Forum and The Financial Times. His writings have appeared among
other places in the Burlington Magazine, Comparative Studies for Society and History,
Harvard Design Magazine, and Art History. He is the editor-in-chief of Architectural Histories,
the leading European scholarly journal dedicated to history of architecture.
Gulnur Mukazhanova (b. 1984, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan) was born shortly before the end
of the USSR. She studied at the Art Academy in Almaty and the Kunsthochschule in Berlin
Weißensee. Now based in Berlin, she has worked mainly with textiles for several years, with
felt as her most important material. Influenced by Kazakh textile traditions, her practice
addresses identity and the transformation of traditional values in the age of globalisation. In
her art, she processes her Kazakh origins and the actual state of society there via an
international perspective.
Dariya Temirkhan (b. 2000, Oral, Kazakhstan) is an artist who works with digital and physical
collages, sound art, and video art. In her works, Dariya talks about the theme of city life that
puts her in a counterbalance to the regularity of auls (villages) and smaller towns. The
decentralization of culture and art in Kazakhstan is especially important to her.
qazaq indie is an independent music association from Kazakhstan dedicated to supporting
independent domestic culture. qazaq indie began in 2016 with the creation of the VK public
page of the same name, where many local DIY and indie musicians first published recordings.
Since the end of 2017, the association has organised showcases and festivals as well as
promoting and managing artists. In 2020, it formed a music label of the same name. The
word ‘indie’ in the name suggests less its genre than indicates the independence of the music
it distributes.
SAMRATTAMA is a music project by Kazakh musician and poet Samrat Irzhassov. He is
also actively engaged as a director and artist in interdisciplinary projects. Each of his
concerts is a performance at the intersection of music, theater, and contemporary art. His
bilingual lyrics reflect his personal and professional explorations of identity and native culture,
while his music is a multi-genre experiment. SAMRATTAMA is a resident of the qazaq indie
music label.
For more intormation, please visit tselinny.org.
