WELCOME TO KAZAKHSTAN

What happens if we begin working with felt as freely as we do with canvas? Not reproducing a familiar pattern, not attempting to literally recreate an ancient tekemet or syrmaq, but allowing the traditional material to speak the language of a contemporary artist?It is at this intersection that the exhibition "Echo of Centuries: Felt and Canvas" by Zhazira Zhumasheva and Asel Abilkhay, which has opened in Almaty, is born. Painting, felt, thread, and fabric come together in a single space, and with them, two eras: the cultural memory accumulated by generations and today's artistic vision.The exhibition is being held in the Central Exhibition Hall of the Abylkhan Kasteyev National Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Its creators are professional artists and educators, each with their own signature style, but with a shared interest in national culture, nature, and space. The exhibition will be open until October 16.However, the main characters here are not the individual subjects, but the materials themselves. Felt, which has accompanied nomadic culture for centuries, enters into a dialogue with canvas – one of the main mediums of professional painting. Thread is no longer merely a means of embroidery, and color is no longer merely a decorative element. Together, they create a new visual language.“We work with felt and painting. Felt is a nationalist tradition, and in painting, we connect what we had before with modern times. We believe that our distinctive feature is innovation,” says Zhazira Zhumasheva.It is crucial for the artists not to copy tradition. The yurt, animals, the steppe, Kazakh household items, and ornaments appear in their works, but no longer as ethnographic illustrations.“We use our everyday and traditional crafts, everything characteristic of Kazakh culture – be it animals, the yurt, or objects inside the yurt – but all of this is executed in a contemporary style,” explains Zhumasheva.Seeing the Steppe Beyond the KeregeOne of Zhazira's works is called "Kerege."The image itself seems incredibly familiar: the latticed base of a yurt, one of the most recognizable elements of a traditional dwelling. But the artist transforms it into a boundary between two spaces.Part of the composition is made of felt, revealing the "koshqar muyіz" (meaning "kushka"). But beyond the kerege, a completely different world opens up—water, a river, a zhailau, and the sky."When you lift the kerege, a landscape opens up behind the felt. This can also be linked to the sky. The entire composition is built on this," the artist explains.The work was created specifically for the exhibition over a period of about two to three months.And this, perhaps, is where the principle of the entire project is particularly evident. Here, a traditional object no longer remains a sign of the past. It is transformed into an artistic construct through which one can literally see beyond—at nature, space, and modernity.Not to repeat tradition, but to continue it.Exhibition curator Galiya Ali emphasizes precisely this: the national artistic tradition in the two artists' works is not reproduced as a ready-made model. The artists take it as a basis, but then work with their own sensations, color, line, rhythm, and texture.Hence the title – "Echo of Centuries."Here, the past is not literally recreated. It returns as an echo: through the natural surface of felt, the repeating rhythm of stitches, the outlines of the ornament, or the movement of paint on canvas.This approach did not arise suddenly. Earlier this year, Zhazira Zhumasheva and Asel Abilkhay presented their joint project "Images of the Steppe" at Almaty Gallery. There, they also combined painting with felt, thread, and fabric. Notable works included Zhazira's large-scale mural "Melody of the Steppe," the collaborative work "Root," and the "Images of the Steppe" series. Zhumasheva's paintings featured rich color, free, sweeping brushstrokes, and dynamism—for example, in the works "Oblivion," "Elegy," and "Dance by the Sea." Asel Abilkhay's paintings in that project were more symbolic: in "Spirit of the Steppe" and "Race," figures and forms seemed to flow into one another, creating an almost dreamlike space.The current "Echo of Ages" continues this conversation, but focuses more strongly on the very encounter of material and time.When Traditional Material Becomes a Personal LanguageArt historian Bayan Barmankulova saw in the artists' works something rarely associated with traditional felt—freedom of gesture.According to her, while classical ornament inevitably subjects the artist to certain canons and rhythms, here space emerges for personal movement—almost like a brushstroke. "Here we see the free thinking of a modern person who wants to approach painting, and in some works, even watercolor or oil. That is, to take national material but work as a contemporary artist," the art critic notes.This idea is especially important for understanding the exhibition. In traditional art, a work often speaks on behalf of a larger cultural community. A contemporary artist maintains this connection but adds his or her own voice.Asel Abilkhay succinctly defines what such a project could hardly exist without:"Not everyone can work well together. I can only say that it's a good union."And indeed, the collaborative work here is not based on the desire to make the two artistic languages ​​identical. Quite the contrary—their differences become part of the idea.Researchers of contemporary decorative art in Kazakhstan consider Asel Abilkhay to be among the artists who have brought traditional tambour embroidery—biz keste—to a new level of development in the contemporary artistic space. Zhazira Zhumasheva, in turn, received her professional training first in easel painting at the Oral Tansykbayev Art School, then at the Temirbek Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts. Since 2013, she has been a member of the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan.Therefore, the encounter between felt and canvas in their work feels natural. For both artists, the boundary between decorative and applied art is quite arbitrary.Felt can be perceived as a painting surface. Thread as a line. Stitch as a rhythm. Colored fiber as a brushstroke.And then, the familiar elements of Kazakh culture cease to be mere quotations from the past.They become the material for a new art."Echo of the Ages" is precisely about this—not an attempt to return to the past, but an opportunity to continue a conversation begun long before us. Only now, instead of literally repeating old forms, the artist gains the right to express something of her own with the same material.