Artist Spotlight: Abdirashit Sydykhanov

On 12 April, the Almaty Museum of Arts is dedicating the day to the artist Abdrashit Sydykhanov. The «Artist Spotlight» series of events features a programme of lectures, guided tours, performances and workshops designed to provide a deeper insight into his artistic practice.

Sydykhanov is a prominent representative of the generation of the «Kazakh Sixtiers» – a group of Kazakh artists that emerged during the Khrushchev Thaw and sought to create a new artistic language rooted in local traditions and engaged in dialogue with world art. Sydykhanov worked as a production designer at «Kazakhfilm» for over 25 years. The artist is also known for his experiments with texture and his use of ancient Turkic clan symbols – the tamga. His mythopoetic language is filled with metaphors of memory, transformation and rebirth.

The «Artist Spotlight» series takes place every three months. On this day, the Almaty Museum of Arts dedicates its programme to one artist from its collection, offering a format that allows visitors to delve deeper into their practice and legacy.

The lectures, the performance, and the film screening are free with a museum entry ticket.

Schedule:

11:30-16:00 в Şeberhana - «Januyalyq Jeksenbі: My Tañba», family art activity at Şeberhana. More about the workshop here.

12:00 - 13:00 - Guided tour of the works of Abdirashit Sydykhanov in the collection of Almaty Museum of Arts, led by Zauresh Sydykhanova.

14.30-16:30 - Lecture & Discussion: The transformation of artistic language in the works of Abdirashit Sydykhanov.

The programme will feature a lecture by art historian Zauresh Sydykhanova, in which she will focus on the life of Abdrashit Sydykhanov, as well as examining and analysing all four periods of his artistic career. The audience will be shown paintings from both museum and private collections. Artist Saule Suleimenova will join the discussion, offering an artist’s perspective on the art and legacy of Abdrashit Sydykhanov.

17:00-17:30 - Performance. Medina Bazargali: Aruaq is not a ghost

In this performance, I think about aruaq as a system that is already there - an archive, a protocol, as something that holds things together. Not all aruaqtar are biological, some feel closer to infrastructures: quiet systems that keep continuity going, that carry patterns, that don’t let everything collapse or disappear. I’m interested in this idea through both sound and code. 

Ancestor = stored computation

Ritual = system maintenance

Memory = storage

You = interface

Medina Bazargali — Multidisciplinary artist, developer, curator, and researcher. Bazargali's work spans augmented reality, video, VJing, sound and live coding. In her live music coding practice, she approaches sound as a contemporary, algorithmic form of traditional qazaq/turkic art of improvised storytelling, reimagining it through real-time code and experimental electronic soundscapes. This synthesis exemplifies her commitment to reinterpreting cultural practices within a contemporary, tech-driven context, exploring the intersections of tradition, technology and identity in a rapidly globalising world.

18:00-20:00 - A lecture by Assiya Baqdaulet in Kazakh and a screening of the film Wings of Song in Russian, 1966 (1 hr 15 mins).

In the 1960s, Kazakh art was rapidly seeking a national identity and its own understanding of beauty. One manifestation of this aesthetic quest was the film *Wings of a Song* (1966), directed by Azerbaijan Mambetov. Today it has largely been forgotten, yet it was this very film that paved the way for masterpieces such as ‘The Angel in the Skullcap’ (1969) and ‘Kyz Zhibek’ (1970). The film, based on the life of the national poet Isa Baizakov, follows the formula of ‘national form, socialist content’: it is a Kazakh story built around class conflict. Before the screening, we will discuss how artists of the 1960s generation, Sakhi Romanov and Abdirashit Sydykhanov, represented Kazakh aesthetics, as well as the hidden symbolism in the film’s sets.

Assiya Baqdaulet – Film and cultural studies researcher and a PhD student at Queen Mary University.

Throughout the day:

• Slideshow of archival photographs.

• Activity zines (5+) inspired by Abdirashit Sydykhanov, for self-directed gallery exploration.