Photography by Almagul Menlibayeva

Born in Kazakhstan, Almagul Menlibayeva works in the city of Almaty and the surrounding vast steppes and mountains in which lie its history. Menlibayeva’s narrative videos and accompanying photographs offer a romantic / melancholic reflection on the non-synchronicity of a country’s development. Since the days prior to the Soviet occupation and the following deportation of people from different corners of the world, the Kazakh people have borne the transformation of their country by others into a cultural and ecological wasteland. Menlibayeva’s work is preoccupied with the complex legacies that are to be found buried in this landscape and in the ruins of the soviet era, as much as in the underlying unconscious of its people. Her work engages the value of this heritage and its continuing presence: how the country and its people were shaped by the ideological interests of a once occupying power.