Almaty Museum of Arts (ALMA) announces the opening of Bill Viola: The Space of Time, the first large-scale exhibition in Central Asia dedicated to one of the most influential artists of our time. The project is realized with the strategic support of Halyk Bank
I Understand Everything
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The exhibition Bill Viola: Space of Time spans 36 years of the artist’s creative journey (from 1977 to 2013) and features 18 works that immerse visitors in a meditative experience.
Viola’s work addresses universal themes of human existence: life and death, memory and time, spirituality, corporeality, and inner transformation. Since the 1970s, Viola consistently expanded the boundaries of video art, combining technological precision with philosophical depth.
Bill Viola’s works have been exhibited at major museums worldwide, including MoMA in New York, Tate in London, Guggenheim Bilbao, and Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2001, The Quintet of Remembrance became the first work of video art to enter the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2014, his video installation Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) was installed in London's St Paul's Cathedral as a permanent loan from Tate Modern.
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Bill Viola Studio (Long Beach, USA). The exhibition is curated by Kira Perov, Executive Director of Bill Viola Studio, Viola’s wife and long-time creative collaborator.
This is the first opportunity for audiences in Kazakhstan and Central Asia to experience such a comprehensive overview of the artist’s practice, which transformed the very understanding of video as an artistic medium.
I understand everything, 1989-90s
Oil on canvas
Menlibayeva’s interdisciplinary practice spans a wide array of mediums, including painting, printmaking, video, photography, performance and textile. The artist often addresses the role of women and identity, ecology, energy and neo-colonialism. She also weaves in indigenous cosmologies and mythologies, providing a nuanced perspective on the region’s evolving identity.
The title I Understand Everything is inspired by Almagul’s early painting of the same name from 1989–90, which depicts semi-abstract images fragmented into grids. Its forms mirror the disarray of a collapsing system and the search for new cultural and political identities, and capture the sense of perplexity and uncertainty of the era caused by the economic hardships, social unrest and the urgent call for change.
Exhibition guide
Almagul Menlibayeva
People and Animals, 1997
Exhibition guide
Almagul Menlibayeva
Little Gods from My Mother’s Dress, 1995
This retrospective not only celebrates the diversity and depth of Menlibayeva’s artistic expression but also highlights how her practice embodies her own identity, which is deeply intertwined with Kazakhstan’s complex history and transformation from a site of nomadism to one of often forced settlement, as well as her re-imagining of possible futures.
The exhibition unpacks how the artist tries to understand her own roots, socio-political, cultural, and economic, as well as the geo-political situation in Kazakhstan through her multifaceted artistic projects.
Curator Gridthiya Gaweewong
Artists
Bill Viola (1951–2024) was born in New York and received his BFA in Experimental Studios from Syracuse University in 1973. He was a pioneer in the fields of new media, video, and installation art, creating his visionary works for over 50 years. Defined by an equal mastery of emergent technology and a brilliant understanding of philosophical, mystical, spiritual and art historical traditions, his works focus on the fundamental human experiences of birth, death, and the unfolding of consciousness.
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