Kazakhstan’s Saule Suleimenova on Plastic, Memory, and Art Ahead of the Bukhara Biennale

This fall, Central Asia will find itself at the center of the global art scene for the first time, with three major events drawing international artists, curators, and collectors to the region.

Two of them will take place in Almaty. Artist Saule Suleimenova spoke with Orda.kz about these upcoming events and why Almaty may soon rival other cities for the title of regional cultural capital.

Saule Suleimenova is one of Kazakhstan’s most recognizable artists. Her works, created from recycled plastic bags, blend environmental consciousness, documentary realism, and a deep reverence for collective memory. She calls plastic an "eternal material," using it to depict life in Almaty, contemporary portraits, and moments often left out of official histories — from the famine to the events of Qantar. Her pieces have been exhibited in London, Berlin, and at the Venice Biennale. They radiate warmth and a longing to preserve what must not be forgotten.

Saule invited Orda.kz journalists to her studio — a quiet, welcoming space where her art comes to life. Over tea and shelpeks (flatbread – Ed.), a long conversation unfolded about the current state of Kazakhstan's art — open, passionate, and unvarnished.

“Recipes for Broken Hearts”

O: Saule, why is there suddenly so much talk about Central Asia in the context of contemporary art, not only locally, but in the international media too? Will this fall really be that special for our region?

S: Yes, we’re talking about events of the major scale. First, there's the first-ever Bukhara Biennale, which will gather over 90 artists and collectives from around the world. Five artists from Kazakhstan were invited: Aziza Shadenova, Gulnur Mukazhanova, Nazira Karim, Aisultan Seitov, and myself.

The Biennale will take place among the restored monuments of historic Bukhara and will bring together not just art, but also architecture, crafts, music, and gastronomy — it’s going to be a vibrant, multi-layered event. The theme is Recipes for Broken Hearts, and even well-known chefs will take part in the festival.

Secondly, two major cultural venues are set to open in Almaty almost simultaneously, both with the potential to reshape the city’s cultural landscape. These are the Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture and the Almaty Museum of Arts. The launch of these spaces is more than just a point of pride; it signals that Almaty is positioning itself as a new center for contemporary art in Central Asia.

O: How were the participants of the Bukhara Biennale chosen? How did you become one of them?

S: All artists were selected by the Biennale's curator and artistic director, Diana Campbell. She’s a respected international curator with extensive experience in large-scale art projects. Her approach is to bring together diverse, multidisciplinary practices.

For example, at this Biennale, artists will be working alongside artisans, chefs, and creatives from other fields. Each piece is a collaboration between artists and specialists — whether they’re chefs, musicians, or craftsmen.

In my case, I collaborated with Shuru Shakar, a traditional folklore ensemble from Bukhara. Working with them was a real inspiration.

I actually discovered the invitation by chance — while cleaning out my spam folder, I saw an email with the subject line Recipes for Broken Hearts. I thought, “How beautiful.” Later, I learned about the concept. According to legend, a heartbroken young man came to Avicenna (Ibn Sina) for help. Avicenna cooked a pilaf from five elemental ingredients, and healed him.

The Biennale draws from this story, viewing art as a form of healing — physical, emotional, and spiritual.

O: What works will you present at the Biennale?

S: One of the project’s core principles is that artworks can't be shipped — everything is created on-site. We traveled to Bukhara in the spring specifically for this. I completed my work in April, but they won’t be revealed until the official opening.

O: When does the Biennale open?

S: On September 5. But we’ll arrive earlier, in August, to install everything. My pieces will be displayed at the Caravanserai. They’re mobile works designed to interact with the wind and sunlight. We even did a test run in the spring to ensure everything fits the architecture seamlessly.

My husband, Kuanysh, is assembling the structures. He sourced the materials at a local bazaar — branches, frames — and the concept will come to life exactly as I envisioned it.

O: Tell us more about your collaboration.

S: I first saw the Shuru Shakar ensemble during my first trip to Uzbekistan. Over a year ago, I took part in a Kyrgyz project called Esmde ("In Memory") — a Central Asian caravan along the roads of memory. It’s a unique research platform about memory and the overlooked chapters of history, open to anyone with an interest in history. And with this caravan, I traveled through Bukhara, Tashkent, Osh, and Jalalabad.

What struck me most in Uzbekistan was how people start dancing at the slightest opportunity. Whether it's a dinner with a reason for celebration or not, or just a walk, there's always someone nearby who starts keeping rhythm, and soon everyone joins in.

And in Bukhara, on the street, I saw these extraordinary elderly women. They were all dressed like queens, with elaborate headdresses embroidered in gold, each adorned with a brightly colored veil in yellow, green, pink, or blue. Their outfits were just as striking, decorated with richly detailed, symbolic patterns.

The women themselves were incredible: full of grace and dignity as they moved, singing slowly and loudly, and in their hands, they held objects with which they beat out a strong musical rhythm. Later, I learned that these were stones, mined right there in the region.

In September, we artists were invited to Bukhara to get familiar with the city and choose local collaborators for the Biennale. The idea was to work with a local master — a ceramicist, miniaturist, or gold embroiderer (in Uzbekistan, gold embroidery is traditionally done by men). I walked, I observed, I admired, but no one truly touched my heart.

Here’s the thing — all of these masters are very respectful of tradition. They follow the rules meticulously, which is admirable. But I’m the complete opposite. I’m a rebel by nature — I do everything differently.

So I told the organizers: I can’t stop thinking about that street ensemble, those radiant, colorful grandmothers. And they found them for me. We were introduced, and my producer recorded their names and stories.

It turns out that these 10 women are all over 75 years old. They’re led by Mashrop Aka, an ethnomusicologist who teaches at the Bukhara Conservatory. Shuru Shakar is his personal project. He’s been working with them for over 20 years. Most of the women had no musical background before this, and now, in retirement, they gather to sing. Their songs are lively, almost like ditties, and always accompanied by movement.

We talked a lot with these amazing women. They shared stories about their lives, their costumes, local history, and the meaning behind their ornamentation. They inspired the pieces I created for the Biennale.

O: Are your works for the Biennale also made from plastic bags?

S: Yes, they’re made from plastic bags applied to transparent polyethylene film. The works will be exhibited in the Caravanserai during the entire event. At least twice a week, Shuru Shakar will perform there as well. I can show you how fiery and full of life they are.

O: Let’s turn back to Almaty. Why do you believe the upcoming fall openings there can compete with the Bukhara Biennale?

S: Oh, they absolutely can! The openings of Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture and the Almaty Museum of Arts are long-awaited, large-scale events. Both of these spaces were supposed to open in the spring, but were pushed to September.

Firstly, there is still some work to be done. And secondly, there's also the hope that visitors coming to the region for the Biennale will take the opportunity to attend all three events. Bukhara alone is expecting up to two million guests.

I have projects at both venues, and I’m very much looking forward to their openings. A large delegation of international curators is expected in Almaty. But unlike Uzbekistan, where the Biennale is organized by the state-run Foundation for the Support of Culture and Art, the institutions in Almaty are private initiatives. 

You can still feel the lack of state support here compared to elsewhere.

Interestingly, Tselinny and the Almaty Museum of Arts have completely different approaches and formats.

For instance, the Art Museum has already acquired world-renowned masterpieces that will attract art lovers from around the globe: an Anselm Kiefer work purchased for $8 million, and Yayoi Kusama’s Mirror Room, part of her iconic series of installations shown at the Pompidou, the Metropolitan, and the Tate.

Now, one of these “Mirror Rooms” will be permanently housed here. There’s also a massive Richard Serra sculpture that will stand outside the museum — an emblem of a truly grand private collection.

Tselinny has a completely different philosophy and approach. Its central focus is on the democratization of art. The guiding idea is openness. Anyone can enter the space, explore freely — walk through, browse the library, visit exhibitions, or attend cultural events — and move on. The space is designed to be organically integrated into Qabanbay Batyr Street: people passing by can simply walk through and continue their way.

Tselinny’s mission is to break down the elitism surrounding art and show that it’s accessible — that anyone can appreciate and interpret it. And it’s not just about fine art. Tselinny is a full-fledged, multidimensional cultural venue that embraces music, dance, cinema, and more.

Every three years, the center hosts a music triennial.

Tselinny also collaborates with MUHKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp. As part of their joint initiative, Tselinny acquires one major work each year — usually by a Kazakh artist — and then exhibits it at MUHKA. This way, Kazakh contemporary art is promoted internationally, at one of the world’s most respected and visited museums. I think that’s incredibly cool!

O: Let’s talk about your own art. In your works, you often reflect on Kazakh, Eastern women and ancestral memory. Where does this inspiration come from?

S: Let’s go back to that memory caravan. It concluded with a conference and an exhibition. That’s where I presented a series titled “Belgіsіz kelіn” (The Unknown Daughter-in-Law). That project embodied everything I felt and realized during the journey. We visited dozens — maybe even hundreds — of museums across Central Asia.

We saw archives, fascinating collections, and historic sites.

And everywhere, women were portrayed as some kind of background illustration of important events. In photos, men are always named: “such-and-such sultan,” “such-and-such mayor.” But it is completely different with women. It’s always vague: “women spinning yarn,” “women and famine,” and so on. They illustrate the scene but remain nameless.

I found that really strange. Women are like an invisible, one might say, unknown, unnamed fabric of our entire Central Asian society. They give everything, and then simply disappear into silence. I couldn’t help but compare them to cuttlefish or octopuses, who, after giving birth, die slowly, drying up and fading away.

That’s what happens to women here.

We have a tradition of knowing seven generations of male ancestors — Jeti Ata. But when it comes to women, we barely know the names of our grandmothers — and beyond that, there's just a void. These women gave their lives to the family, and then turned to dust, like octopuses. Many of my works explore this theme.

Since 2018, I’ve been working on a series called “Residual Memory”, in which I use plastic bags to document all the traumatic periods in Kazakhstan’s 20th-century history. I base my work on photographic documents that show events as they were.

One example is the photography of Dmitry Bagayev, who created an extensive photo chronicle of life in the Kazakh steppe, including the 1930s famine. I recreated one of his photos using plastic bags, choosing brown tones to reflect the parched steppe. Interestingly, I found that all our plastic bags in those tones came from food-related places: bakeries, grocery stores, and candy shops.

So the starving people in my piece are made of bags printed with slogans like “We’re waiting for you,” or “The most delicious bread,” and so on.

And then I just decided to move forward. The next important subject was the fate of children who survived the famine. I found a photo of a group of children sitting on the ground, with NKVD officers standing over them and train cars in the background. Everyone knows that in the 1932-33s, famine orphans were sent to state-run institutions.

We’re all descendants of these surviving children. There were orphans in my family too. My maternal grandfather, Abdrakhim Yelemanov, told me he was raised by a Tatar family and wasn’t given food unless he asked for it in Russian.

I also have another work about surviving children, which is based on an archival photo from an Orenburg orphanage, titled “Waiting for Breakfast.” In it, an elderly woman in a white kimeshek (a traditional Kazakh headdress worn by married women, especially older women – Ed.) sits among painfully thin children.

I allowed myself to multiply, duplicate the images of the heroes of this photograph. That is, I have two grandmas there, as if I were seeing double, and duplicated children.

I also created a piece about special settlers. In the archival photo (unfortunately, the author is unknown), people with European features are digging in the ground while NKVD officers in their ominous uniforms stand watch.

I had a bunch of black-and-white bags printed with newspaper clippings, ads for men’s fashion, suits, and so on. That’s what I used to create the uniforms of these NKVD officers.

Documentary style is very important to me in my work. I generally don’t use fantasy in my work. I think it’s a bad helper. I don’t need fantasy, I need documents. And I express myself only in how I do it, how I create my paintings.

O: Saule, why bags? This is your signature technique. How did you come to it?

S: (smiling) When you make something from bags, you're absolutely sure that it will last forever. Files will be deleted, paper will fall apart, but a bag is an eternal material.

Yes, I came up with this technique myself, but not right away; it took me a long time to get there. When I decided to work with bags of different colors and textures, I first pressed them down with glass. I made my first work from bags in 2024 for Astana Arbat Fest: I simply laid out the bags on a huge plexiglass, glued them together with tape in some places, and pressed them down with another glass on top.

The work did not last until the end of the festival. People broke the glass very quickly.

I really wanted to keep the volume, and for some time, I just "shot" the bags with a stapler. But it didn't work. And then someone told me: why don't you use a glue gun? And so I tried working with hot glue. At first, I worked on polycarbonate. In 2018, I made a series of landscapes. For example, this work — "Steppe in Winter".

Polycarbonate is convenient because it is very light. But I ran into a problem — it’s very hard to transport. That’s how I ended up switching to thick rolls of transparent polyethylene film, which I use now.

O: Where do you get so many bags? Do you collect them or buy them?

S: I collect them. People bring them a lot, and even from abroad, I bring them back from my trips. For example, we have a lot of these bags — orange. Here are the lilac ones, my favorite. Our greengrocers use them. Look at these Kazakh ones from toybastars (small presents given to guests at the end of a celebration, especially weddings, as a token of appreciation – Ed.) with ornaments. I often decorate my characters’ clothes with them.

O: And if we turn to modern Kazakhstan, what events of our time are reflected in your works?

S: When I started the “Residual Memory” series, I seemed to understand that I now have such a duty, an obligation to document what is happening. 2019 — Nazarbayev announced his resignation. People were inspired; something was happening every day. I started a diary of changes.

There was a strike of oil workers in Karachaganak, then land riots, after which people came out, outraged by the renaming of Astana to Nur-Sultan. And then the war in Ukraine, Qantar.

I didn't know how to live with it, with this pain. You close your eyes, and it feels like blood is flowing inward — all you see is red. It was panic and grief all at once.

I’m sure others felt the same.

And at some point, it dawned on me: if I see this red color, I have to embody it in my work. Around that time, Vlad Slutsky, the founder of Arbat Fest, suggested I do an exhibition at the Dom na Baribayeva. He said,

“Cover the whole wall.”

And that wall is five meters tall and nearly 12 meters wide. 

So I started working. Kuanysh helped me glue the sky — I wouldn’t have managed without him. At the last minute, we figured out that the fog and heavy sky of Qantar should be made from thick, high-quality German garbage bags. We cut and glued them — and it worked perfectly.

And I started working. Kuanysh helped me glue the sky. I wouldn't have managed without him. Almost at the last moment, we realized that the fog and leaden sky of Qantar should be made from, you know, good German garbage bags. They are big and thick. We cut them and glued everything completely. It turned out great.

O: Was there any reaction from the authorities to your work?

S: Nothing apparent. But one local institution planned to buy Sky Over Almaty — then they suddenly canceled the deal. Still, I’m moving forward. At the end of the day, the bags aren’t going anywhere.

Original Author: Aliya Askar