The Almaty Museum of Arts is currently hosting the exhibition "Bill Viola: Timespace"—the first large-scale project in Central Asia dedicated to one of the most influential contemporary artists.
The exhibition spans 36 years of Bill Viola's career, from 1977 to 2013, and features 18 works. The exhibition is structured as a meditative journey, gradually immersing the viewer in the artist's key themes: time, memory, life and death, spirituality, corporeality, and inner transformation.
Bill Viola is considered one of the pioneers of video art and new media art. For over 50 years, he has explored the potential of video as an independent artistic language, combining technological precision with philosophical depth. His works have been exhibited in major museums around the world, including MoMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition's format makes it particularly significant: for audiences in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, this is the first opportunity to see such a broad cross-section of the artist's practice, which has transformed the concept of video as an artistic medium.
The project was created in collaboration with Bill Viola Studio. The exhibition was curated by Kira Perov, the studio's head and the artist's wife and longtime collaborator.
The exhibition is also accompanied by a catalogue with texts by researcher Valentino Catrícala and Kira Perov, as well as a conversation between John J. Hanhardt and Bill Viola.