Almagul Menlibayeva – Installation

One of the biggest surprises of the last Biennial in Venice was the central Asian pavilion, with among others female artist Almagul Menlibayeva. For the Film Festival Rotterdam, Menlibayeva edited several recordings of performances on the barren plains of southern Kazakhstan into two new short films (On The Range and I Will Never Forget This). Shown here together, the films reveal a glimpse of the so-called punk shamanism that Menlibayeva supports in which Sufism, Buddhism and Shamistic rituals are combined. The contemporary score places the intangible movements of the female protagonists in the here and now. In Kazakhstan, a country with many different peoples and religious divides, it is essential to seek your own identity now that Russia, China and the United States are all trying to gain influence in the area.