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Almagul Menlibayeva
Almagul Menlibayeva is an Kazakh female artist and she was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 1969. Almagul keeps working on different fields of art, such as photography, video art, film and so on. She is living and working in Berlin and Almaty, also collaborating with the sound artist and composer OMFO (German Popov, Amsterdam).

Education Background
Almagul Menlibayeve studied in State Institute of Art and Theatre in Almaty from 1987 to 1992, where she was inspired by Soviet Russian avant-garde school of Futurism. And she holds a MFA from the Art and Theatre University of Kazakhstan in Almaty.

Awards and Grants
2013 Main Award, KINO DER KUNST International Film Festival, Munich

2011 KfW Audience Award, VIDEONALE 13: Festival for Contemporary Art, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn Art and Culture Network Program Grant, OpenSociety Institute, Budapest

2010 Prize de la Nuit Award, 8th International Festival Signes de Nuit, Paris

2009 First Prize, Zolotoy Buben [Golden Tambourine], 13th International Festival of Television Programs and Films, Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia

2004 Third prize, Videoidentity:Sacred Places of Kazakhstan, Video Festival, Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Almaty

2002 Second prize, 1st Video Festival, the Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Almaty Tarlan Annual National Independent Prize of the Philanthropists’ Club of Kazakhstan, Almaty

1995 Grand Prix, Asia Art, 2nd Central Asian Biennale, Tashkent Daryn State Youth Prize, Kazakhstan

Selected Solo Exhibitions
​2016 ​Solo show, Yay gallery, Baku, Azerbaijan (upcoming September)

2014 Transoxiana Dreams, Videozone, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany;

2013  Empire of the Memory, Ethnographic Museum, Warsaw, Polland;

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;

Les rêves perdus d'Aral, Galerie Albert Benamou, Paris, France;

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 ;

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;

Noticeable Works
Kissing Totems (2008)

Kissing Totems is the first solo exhibition Almagul menlibayeve held in United State, 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 became 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.

On the Road (2007)

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:

''“My educational background is in the Soviet Russian avant-garde school of Futurism, which I combine with a nomadic aesthetic of post-Soviet, contemporary Kazakhstan – something that I have been exploring in recent years through my photographic and video work.

I use specific ways of expression in modern and contemporary art as a vehicle to investigate my personal archaic atavism as a certain mystical anthropomorphism. In other words, I explore the nature of a specific Egregore, a shared cultural psychic experience, which manifests itself as a specific thought-form among the people(s) of the ancient, arid and dusty Steppes between the Caspian Sea, Baikonur and Altai in today’s Kazakhstan. In the Russian language, Archaic Atavism is personalized as a being, which points to and creates a different meaning. We are not just speaking about an idea or archaic element in the collective subconscious of a people, but about the embodiment of our archaic atavism that becomes an active entity, just like a creature itself. Our archaic atavism is not just internalized, but also externalized. It is as if he has been awakened by the post-Soviet experience of the indigenous Kazakh people, who are becoming their own after 80 years of Soviet domination and cultural genocide. Suddenly he (Archaic Atavism) became interested in enculturation and in behavioral modernity. He also began to have entertaining dialogues with the transnational circulation of ideas in contemporary art. For this dialogue, I have chosen the medium of video and photography and like to work with the notion of memory and reality. My archaic atavism is interested in my video explorations in the Steppes and in post-Soviet Asia. By editing raw data and combining documentary and staged footage, I become his voice, enabling a cultural eхоdus from long oblivion. My work raises metaphysical questions such as who am I? And where shall I go? This (psychic) experience and perspective marks my artistic language.” (Almagul Menlibayeva) ''÷