New Heroes and Body Forms: The 'Müsinder' Exhibition at Almaty Museum of Arts

"Müsinder" is one of those exhibitions where every visitor will find something for themselves. It features academic examples of Soviet-era sculpture, more avant-garde works from early independent Kazakhstan, and brand-new pieces created specifically for this show. The exhibition comprises 54 works by 40 artists, including truly iconic names.

The exhibition is divided into four thematic sections: "A Play of Opposites?", "Family and the Bond of Generations", "History and Myth-Making", and "The Body and Society: Acceptance or Confrontation". The last of these is particularly significant, given that the Kazakh word "mүсін" translates not only as "sculpture" but also as "figure", especially the human figure. This is why corporeality features so prominently: there are full-length human sculptures, busts, isolated parts of torsos, and even the complete absence of a body.

Chronologically, the exhibition opens with the section titled "A Play of Opposites?" — the most classical of all. Here one can see figures of the greatest sons of the Kazakh land: writer and playwright Mukhtar Auezov, writer and revolutionary Saken Seifullin, actor and director Asanali Ashimov. And right alongside them is a truly unimaginable work by Yerkin Mergenov, created back in 1977 and never shown since its making: the head of Lenin atop a metre-long metal pole.

Source: Press office of Almaty Museum of Arts

This section also makes room for pioneers. For instance, Khakimzhan Nauryzbayev — the first professional Kazakh sculptor — or Liya Kolotilina and Zoya Beregovaya, among the first women sculptors in Kazakhstan.

The display flows seamlessly into "History and Myth-Making". The renaming of streets, the shifting of heroes, and the search for new figures worthy of exaltation — nearly every exhibit in this section grapples with such questions. A special place is occupied by the heroic component. Here we find the balbals of Moldakul Narymbetov made from car tyres and stones, the truly enormous and unsettling "Pharaoh on Horseback" by Georgy Tryakin-Bukharov, and "Monument to the Unknown Hero" by Yerbossyn Meldibekov — a horse's legs without a body, which became the exhibition's poster image.

Source: Press office of Almaty Museum of Arts

Perfectly fitting this theme of batyrs and horses is Said Atabekov's triptych of saddles: two in an American style and one entirely encrusted with rhinestones. A kind of irony aimed at our fondness for things that are expensive, lavish and "like in the West". Incidentally, Atabekov, like the aforementioned Moldakul Narymbetov, is a member of the iconic art group "Kyzyl Traktor", one of the founding forces of contemporary art in Kazakhstan.

The section "Family and the Bond of Generations" is symbolically placed at the very heart of the exhibition. Here are sculptures on the themes of family, motherhood and childhood, ranging from fairly traditional depictions of women to quite unconventional works. Take, for example, the wooden embryo by Askar Yesenbayev, created together with Almagul Menlibayeva. Resembling a small pharaoh's tomb, this 1995 work underscores the symbolism of the birth not only of life but also of a new country — which Kazakhstan had become just a few years earlier.

Source: Press office of Almaty Museum of Arts

Yet "Müsinder" works not only with physical sculpture but also expands the very notion of it. As an example, let us consider Aida Adilbek's video-recorded performance "JEZTYRNAQ". In Kazakh folklore, Zheztyrnaq is a fearsome witch whose power lies in her metal claws. The artist fashioned herself such claws and, on video, chops them off. Beside the screen, a vitrine displays the claws themselves, which, apart from the performance, also read as an allusion to the country's resource-extraction economy.

And on the adjacent wall hangs a reproduction of a lost work by the collective of artists led by Rustam Khalfin, "Zero Level. Clay Project". A full-scale building, each part of which is shaped like some part of the human body. It is an entire series of photographs, offering viewers a detailed glimpse of this curious artefact as a memory.

Source: Press office of Almaty Museum of Arts

Directly opposite is another example: Zoya Falkova's famous boxing punchbag Evermust ("Always Must"), shaped like a female torso (the original is held at the Museu De L'Art Prohibit in Barcelona). Here the conversation touches on boundaries and domestic violence. Word has it that at one of the previous exhibitions, a visitor could not resist and actually struck the punchbag.

The exhibition does not shy away from euphemisms either. For instance, Madina Zholdybek's work "As bolsyn" features manti dumplings at various stages of preparation: from rolled-out dough to fully assembled manti, whose forms clearly trace the outlines of female genitalia. A telling metaphor that every family has its own shape of manti, which women have shaped generation after generation.

Source: Press office of Almaty Museum of Arts

Although "Müsinder" occupies just a single hall in the museum, it proves remarkably representative. And it can be visited until May 2027.