Assel Kadyrkhanova
- Email: fhaka@leeds.ac.uk
- Thesis title: Cultural Memory and Trauma in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Art as Research
- Supervisors: Prof. Griselda Pollock, Dr Judith Tucker
Profile
I am a visual artist and researcher. My practice-led research looks at art as a medium of memory, with a specific focus on memory and trauma in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. As a postgeneration artist, I am interested in the question of inheritance and practices of secondary witnessing.
I use hand-embroidery, hand-drawn animation, photography, video and sound to create multi-layered artworks that explore various aspects of transgenerational memory and trauma.
Setting artmaking into dialogue with theories of collective memory and trauma, my research concerns the role of artistic practice in the formation and revision of cultural memory of traumatic events. As part of this research, I study memory of the Kazakh famine in 1930 – 1933, the result of the Soviet policies of collectivisation and sedentarisation. My hand-drawn animation film All the Dreams We Dream (made between 2017 and 2020) is an attempt to create an image for the imageless event to facilitate processes of mourning.
Scholarships and Fellowships
CEC Artslink Fellowship, 2018
Leeds Anniversary Research Scholarship, 2016
Bolashak International Scholarship of the President of Kazakhstan, 2009
Travel grants
2019 AHC Faculty Research Dissemination Grant, University of Leeds
2018 CESS International Travel Grant, Central Eurasian Studies Society, University of Pittsburgh
Publications
‘The Endless Time After’, a chapter in Living Memory. Stalinism in Kazakhstan, edited by Zh. Abylkhozhin, M. Akulov, A. Tsai, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021.
Conference papers
2020 Image, Sound, Absence, Silence. Paper presentation and film screening at Prisms of Silence, International symposium, Tallinn, Estonia Prisms of Silence
2019 Film Screening + artist talk: All the Dreams We Dream: Dreams and Trauma in Kazakhstan, at Dreams and Atrocity Symposium, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
2019 Erased Memories of the Soviet Famine in Kazakhstan, presented at Third Annual Memory Studies Association Conference, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain
2018 'Living through Spaces of Memory: Artistic Research on Historical Trauma in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan'. CESS 19th International Conference of Central Eurasian studies society, Pittsburgh University, USA, 2018
Solo Exhibitions
Windows of Tolerance, Project Space, Leeds (UK), 2017
Self-Portrait with an Archetype, Ular gallery, Almaty (Kazakhstan), 2013
Recent group exhibitions and screenings
2021 Calvert Journal Film Festival, London
2019 CITATION, within EARN (European Artistic Research Network) conference, University of Leeds, Leeds City Gallery Citation EARN
2019 Living Memory, City Museum of Almaty
2018 Postnomadic Mind, Wapping Project, London
2018 At the Corner: City, People, Places, Tselinny Centre for Contemporary art, Almaty
2017 Internal memory: Not enough space? Garage Museum of contemporary art, Moscow
2017 Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan, Yarat | Contemporary Art Space, Baku
2017 Protagonists: Invisible Pavilion of Kazakhstan, 56 Venice Biennial, Venice
Artist residencies
Artist-in-Residency, California College of the Arts, San Francisco (USA) within CEC Artslink Fellowship, 2018
The Eighth river, commissioned by the Committee Biosphere UNESCO Kazakhstan, Ile-Alatau National park, 2015
Summer schools
'Memory in the Digital age: International summer school on Comparative Genocide studies'. Bergen-Belsen Memorial centre (Germany), 2017
Summer school on theories and practices of contemporary art, Tien-Shan astronomic observatory (Kazakhstan), 2013
Research interests
Memory studies, trauma studies. Embodied knowledge and phenomenology. Semiotics. Moving image. Haptic practices and mimetism
Qualifications
- MFA Newcastle Unversity, UK (2011)
- MA Painting, Kazakh National Academy of Arts (2007)
- Painting (BA) Kazakh National Academy of Arts (2005)