Andakulova Gallery, Legend Art Club host Kazakh icon Almagul Menlibayeva
- Last updated: August 17, 2025 | 10:06
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Andakulova Gallery, in collaboration with Legend Art Club, is currently presenting Genius Loci – Central Asia, a solo exhibition by acclaimed multimedia artist Almagul Menlibayeva (Aug. 3 — Sept. 3) at the DIFC Satellite Gallery. The exhibition draws its title from the Roman concept of genius loci or the protective spirit of a place. Traditionally associated with sacred sites, historic neighbourhoods and ancient landscapes, genius loci has, in contemporary architecture, expanded to include imagined territories, including even speculative Martian habitats.
For Menlibayeva, the concept is a lens to explore both real and mythological places across the Central Asian steppe, tracing routes along the Silk Road, caravanserai, and other historical touch points, from abandoned fishing vessels resting on drained seas, to the poetic remnants of ancient trade and travel. In Genius Loci — Central Asia, Menlibayeva reflects on the cultural transformations of Central Asia, weaving together its histories, myths, and modernities. Key works include Ulugh Beg: Intrinsic Futuristic Machine, an immersive reflection on the life of Sultan Mirzo Ulugh Beg, the 15th-century ruler of Samarkand and pioneering astronomer.
Combining conceptual orbits, utopian/dystopian skylines and fictional architecture, the piece reimagines his historic observatory through video and photographic installations like The Window, a dual-city perspective juxtaposing the skylines of Dubai’s DIFC to the left and Almaty to the right, capturing the contrasts and resonances between two cultural and economic hubs.
Born in 1969 in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Almagul Menlibayeva is a trailblazing multimedia artist whose work traverses video, photography, painting, mixed media installations, AI, and cyber textiles. She holds an MFA from the National Academy of Arts and Theatre, Almaty, and was part of the underground collective Green Triangle, during the late-Soviet art scene. Her retrospective exhibition will open the Almaty Museum of Arts in September 2025.
Menlibayeva’s socially and ecologically driven practice interrogates post-socialist modernity through a decolonial lens. She reinterprets gender roles, environmental decay, nomadic cosmologies, indigenous mythologies and Soviet legacy in contemporary Central Asia. In an interview to berlinartlink.com she defined her practice the following way: “My educational background,” she said, “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 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, she added, archaic atavism is personalised as a being. “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 which becomes an active entity, just like a creature itself,” she said. According to her, archaic atavism is not just internalised, but also externalised in people. In her case, it is as if one has been awakened by the post-Soviet experience of the indigenous Kazakh people, who are coming to their own after 80 years of Soviet domination and cultural genocide.
“Suddenly, he or archaic atavism became interested in enculturation and in behavorial modernity,” Menlibayeva continues. “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.”
Menlibayeva’s archaic atavism is interested in her video explorations in the Steppes and in post-Soviet Asia. By editing raw data and combining documentary and staged footage, she becomes his voice, “enabling a cultural exodus 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.”
She has earned numerous accolades, including Kazakhstan’s Daryn State Prize, the Tarlan National Award, the Grand Prix Asia Art (II Biennial of Central Asia), and the prestigious Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres awarded by the French Ministry of Culture, in 2017. Her awards in film and video include the Main Prize at Munich’s Kino Der Kunst (2013), the KfW Audience Award at Videonale 13 in Germany (2011) and the Prize de la Nuit Award for ‘Exodus’ in Paris (2010).
Menlibayeva’s work has been exhibited at prestigious venues, including Transformation — multi-screen installation at Grand Palais, Paris (2016–17); Transoxiana Dreams, a video installation exploring the desiccation of the Aral Sea, awarded at Kino Der Kunst (2013); Ride the Caspian, a two-channel video (Sharjah Biennial 10); Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023) with multimedia installations dealing with the Kazakh famine, including The Tongue and Hunger and Archipelago Karlag, blending personal and historical narratives; I Understand Everything, a retrospective at Almaty Museum of Arts, curated by Gridthiya Gaweewong, taking in her career from the late 1980s to the present.
Menlibayeva has also presented work at LACMA (USA), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Norway), Guangzhou Triennial (China) and Sydney Biennale, among more. DIFC Satellite Gallery is designed to showcase both emerging and established talent. Hosting a new artist or gallery each month, it offers dynamic and evolving exhibitions that bring a vibrant, accessible artistic presence to the heart of one of Dubai’s leading business and lifestyle districts.