The climate catastrophe is no longer somewhere far away overseas. It's in the dusty air, in the vanished rivers, in the desertifying regions. Now our days are accompanied by smog, drought, salt and sand storms. Everyone copes as they can: some ignore it, some make alarming reels, some compose songs.
And artists do what they know how to do. They speak in their own language: of images, rituals, installations. Their art is a way to be heard. We have gathered for you bright and painfully honest environmental artistic statements from Central Asia.
Art as Protest: When Silence is More Terrible
Askat Akhmetyarov and Aigerim Ospan — Baqsy Saryny
2021, performance, Astana
The construction of Lake Maly Taldykol in the capital of Kazakhstan has been ongoing for more than a year. In September 2021, artists Ashat Akmedyarov and Aigerim Ospan went to the shore dressed as shamans. Akmedyarov stood in the path of trucks carrying soil, and Ospann sat down with a kobyz in front of a bulldozer. The sound of the instrument, reminiscent of a swan's cry, became the lament of the lake, which is unable to defend itself.
Gavkhar Akhmedzhanova — "Inaction"
2022, video art
A wooden man on a gallows: a noose around his neck, but under his feet is not a stool, but a melting ice cube. Second by second, the ice disappears, and the character finds himself trapped. Gavkhar's work is a visual embodiment of helplessness in the face of the climate crisis. This is not a warning, but a statement of fact: time is running out.
Return to Nature: Rituals, Symbols, Growth
Inkuzart — "Let there be peace"
2023, land art, dried-up bottom of the Aral Sea, Muynak
The artist Inkuzart is known for his street art works in Tashkent, but one of his latest actions went beyond the urban environment. On the former bed of the Aral Sea, he painted a peace symbol 100 meters in diameter—a pacifist sign—inside which he planted over 1000 saxaul saplings. This is not only an environmental gesture but also an act of hope: saxaul can slow down desertification. A plaque nearby reads: "Tinchlik bo’lsin" ("Let there be peace").
Saodat Ismailova — "The Whisper of Oxus"
2016, three-channel video installation
"Ox" is the ancient name of the Amu Darya, one of the greatest rivers in the region. In a poetic video, Saodat traces its path—from the highlands of Tajikistan to the deserts of Karakalpakstan, where the river dies. This video contains dreams told to the water, traditions disappearing along with the landscape, and the image of the river as a vessel of memory. It is a journey through mythology, ecology, and time, where water is not a backdrop but an active character.
Recycling as a method: new material — new optics
Saule Suleimanova
Since 2014, cellophane painting, Almaty
Saules Suleimenova creates large-scale canvases not with paint, but with trash—or more precisely, with colorful plastic bags. These works are not only about recycling but also about rethinking imagery: plastic becomes a painterly material through which the artist interrupts the vicious cycle of production and waste.
The City and Human Footprint: Everyday Ecology
Esther Scheinfeld — "Artery"
2022, video art, Tashkent
"What if it's not materials, but the urban environment itself that becomes the medium?" The Kalkauz Canal in Tashkent is not just a water stream, but a mirror of the city. For nine months, artist Esther Sheinfeld filmed how the river interacts with people and trash. Her video research shows how traditions, gender roles, daily habits, and inaction are reflected in the water. At the heart of the work is the question: where do our trash and responsibility flow away to?
The one who is no longer by your side
Said Atabekov - "The Last Carpet with the Last Turanian Tiger"
2020, installation on Lake Balkhash
The Turanian tiger once roamed Central Asia, confidently, like a master. Each tiger family had its own land, its own territory. Now — only a myth. Said Atabekov shows a portrait of this vanished beast through fabric woven by the women of his family. The carpet — like a memory, and the Turanian tiger has survived only in legends, on cave walls, in photographs, in art.
Eco-landfill in Central Asia
2024, eco-laboratory, Dushanbe
The "Polygon" project is an open eco-art laboratory where artists from Central Asia are exploring how to speak about ecology when words no longer work. Polygon brings together artists from different regions who not only observe but act, and speak in a way that gets heard.
Founder of the project Natalia Idrisova transforms tree trunks, discarded by a mudflow, into symbols of loss. Her installation "Trees" is a memorial to the forests that are being cut down, burned, and turned into smoke.
How to capture 40 years of climate change—not in graphs and numbers, but in a visual pattern? Alla Rumyantseva found the answer in the "Climate Suzani"—a data art collage where each color reflects the actual temperature in Dushanbe from 1983 to 2023.
The Wall That Breathes: Art for Beauty and for Work
2025, mural, Tashkent
In Tashkent, there is a wall that not only beautifies the city but also cleans it. The eco-mural by artist Nadezhda Riksieva—the first in Uzbekistan—has become a symbol of how art can literally work for ecology.
The paint used for this work contains photocatalysts: they capture harmful substances and turn the wall into an urban filter, like an entire alley of trees. It looks like just what we need
Ecology is not just a topic, but a way of thinking. Artists from Central Asia use materials, landscapes, images, and gestures to show that we are already inside an ecological crisis. But we are also inside a culture that is capable of speaking—and perhaps changing. These works do not solve the problem globally, but they help us look at it differently—and perhaps feel our own involvement. And that is already the beginning of change.