Following a long reconstruction project, the new Tselinny Centre of Contemporary Culture has opened in Almaty. This ambitious institution, backed by substantial financial resources, is set to play a crucial role in developing the infrastructure for contemporary art in Kazakhstan. Art Focus Now looks at the centre’s background, its mission, and its inaugural program.

The idea for a contemporary art museum was first conceived in 2016 by Kazakh entrepreneur Kairat Boranbayev. Although the new building had initially been expected to open in 2020, the timeline was pushed back multiple times. The institution itself officially launched in 2018, but without a permanent venue, it existed in a semi-phantom state. Over the past seven years, however, Tselinny has produced numerous projects. These have included a publishing programme featuring a collection of essays by renowned decolonial scholar Madina Tlostanova (Linköping University), as well as a book on late 20th-century Almaty modernism by Russian architectural historians Anna Bronovitskaya and Nikolai Malinin, co-published with Russia’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.

Tselinny has initiated artistic laboratories, research, and educational programs, including for children, a digital archive of Kazakhstani art, and a triennial of sound art. Its patrons’ club and endowment fund are designed to foster a culture of philanthropy in Kazakhstan which is something the nation’s art world urgently needs, given limited interest in art among the political and economic elite. Tselinny has also staged exhibitions and art projects in Kazakhstan and abroad, such as video art by Taus Makhacheva (b. 1983) at the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea and and installation by Almagul Menlibayeva (b. 1969) dedicated to ‘Bloody January’ of 2022 – mass protests and civil unrest sparked by sharp increase in liquefied petroleum gas prices.

The Tselinny also was behind one of the most striking exhibitions of 2024 in Kazakhstan, ‘Buran – Baikonur’ by artist Yerbossyn Meldibekov (b. 1964) and curated by Dastan Kozhakhmetov. Its sharp anti-totalitarian statement was embedded in the totalitarian space of Almaty’s House of the Army, a dramatic transformation from within. The exhibition provoked anger across the wide political spectrum but stayed open until it was due to close. On the Almaty art scene, some voices now argue that large institutions like Tselinny and the newly opened Almaty Museum of Arts will promote ‘safe’, apolitical art, pushing bolder works into the margins. Tselinny’s involvement in ‘Buran – Baikonur’ is therefore seen as an encouraging sign, though not necessarily indicative of a trend.

Until now, Tselinny has been perceived as an ‘emerging’ institution. It has spent many years shaping its concept, structure, and processes. With its fully-fledged opening now, the coming years will show what the team has built over this long, drawn-out prologue.

The easiest way to describe Tselinny is as an ‘Almaty Garage’. The two institutions share many values, goals, aesthetics, and ways of communicating with audiences. A team from the Moscow insitution even advised Tselinny’s founders. The comparison is meaningful: in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Garage was a bridgehead of the global world in a post-Soviet city. It introduced international concepts, practices, and the very language of contemporary art – a foreign language for much of the post-Soviet public. It was assumed that this island of global culture would gradually expand, re-coding the urban space, which to some extent did occur until the early 2020s. Tselinny faces a similar challenge in Kazakhstan: confronting both (post-)Soviet legacies and, on the other hand, radical notions of a ‘religious state.’

Yet globalism in Kazakhstani art does not preclude reflection on the national. The ‘Kazakh note’ will likely sound strongly in Tselinny. Its main research areas are gender, faith, and ecology. The centre aims to combine exhibitions with research, while also playing a strong role in popularizing contemporary art among local audiences – there is an appealing public space with a café, bookstore, and design shop.

Tselinny’s new building is a reimagining of second-wave Soviet modernism by renowned British architect Asif Khan (b. 1979). Originally constructed in the 1960s as a widescreen cinema, the venue was repurposed for nightclubs after privatization in the 2000s, undergoing unsympathetic renovations. For years, monumental sgraffito by Yevgeny Sidorkin (1930-1982), a key figure in Kazakhstani Soviet art, was thought lost. During the latest reconstruction, it was discovered hidden behind drywall. Through careful restoration, the artwork was preserved, with missing fragments deliberately distinguished from the original.

The front façade of the building balances openness with a desire to avoid the all-glass look associated with shopping malls. Instead, the glass is overlaid with metal lamellas forming a wave – evoking both a curtain (a nod to the cinema past) and, more importantly, a cloud. According to Asif Khan, “the cloud symbolizes the dialogue between Tengri the Sky God and Umai the Earth Goddess, as well as the infinite possibilities of life born from their union.” His goal was to add delicacy and organic naturalness to monumental Soviet architecture. The building is both striking and human-scaled. It fits into the surrounding low-rise district near Almaty’s golden square, the city’s historical centre, yet stands out for its architectural quality. One of the opening exhibitions, From Sky to Earth: Tselinny by Asif Khan, is about the reconstruction project itself.

There is an emphasis on horizontal management and the absence of a chief curator – the rejection of a unipolar vision. This anti-authoritarian stance matters, given the founder’s identity: businessman Kairat Boranbayev, and the fact that his daughter, art historian Alima Kairat, is the art director of the institution. Boranbayev began as a physical education teacher before becoming an entrepreneur in the 1990s, quickly rising into the inner circle of former president Nazarbayev, even marrying into his family - Alima was once married to Nazarbayev’s grandso). In 2022, shortly after ‘Bloody January’, Boranbayev was arrested on embezzlement charges – widely seen as part of President Tokayev’s purge of the old elites.

By November 2023, Boranbayev was released. Today, political journalist Maksat Nurpeisov sees him as part of the “emerging pro-Tokayev business elite.” In other words, Boranbayev has managed to successfully reinvent himself. Tselinny clearly works to support his new image as a responsible oligarch investing in social development. As for Alima Kairat, even critics of the local elite acknowledge her as a capable, progressive professional. The declaration of horizontal governance signals that Tselinny should not be seen as the Boranbayevs’ pet family project or associated with authoritarian practices of the Old Kazakhstan.

One wing of the building houses ‘Capsule’, an exhibition based on a digital archive of Central Asian art since 1985, a project developed by Tselinny. The main hall of the former cinema hosts ‘Barsakelmes’, a multidisciplinary project combining musical performance (featuring qazaq indie, SAMRATTAMA, Balkhash Snytsya, dudeontheguitar, Steppe Sons, lovozero, and international artists Zere (b. 1998), and Saadet Türköz (b. 1961)); a large felt installation by Gulnur Mukazhanova (b. 1984) ‘ Bosaga – Transition. The Fabric of Ancestral Memory’, and a video work by Daria Temirkhan (b. 2000), ‘Who Guards Your Dreams?’ projected over Sidorkin’s sgraffito. ‘Barsakelmes’ reflects on colonial trauma and national tradition as a source of renewal. Once an island in the Aral Sea, Barsakelmes’ narrative revolves around the tragedy of the Aral Sea, which vanished due to Soviet agricultural exploitation, while it also draws on an ancient Central Asian legend about music’s power to drive out evil.

The project will run until early December, with an exhibition by Galym Madanov (b. 1958) and Zauresh Terekbay (b. 1964) scheduled for January.