ALMATY.- The Tselinny Center opens on September 5, 2025 in a new, permanent venue, the Soviet-era former Tselinny cinema building, which has undergone a major transformation under the direction of British architect Asif Khan.
Tselinny Center’s inaugural exhibitions and installations are complemented by a discursive programme of lectures, discussions, book launches, family workshops and roundtables, as well as a series of events under the title Barsakelmes, which is grounded in the nomadic, performative character of Kazakh culture.
The programme takes as its geographical and conceptual starting point Barsakelmes—a forgotten island in the now-dry Aral Sea. Literally translated as ‘if one goes there, one won’t return,’ Barsakelmes denotes a type of colonial memory that is hard to heal or undo. A performance titled Barsakelmes is a contemporary reinterpretation of a Central Asian legend in which the divine power of music drives out evil. At once an artistic reflection, a ritual, and an appeal to collective memory, the performance reimagines the legend as a modern critique of our understanding of “crises” and evil spirits.
During Barsakelmes, Berlin-based Kazakh visual artist Gulnur Mukazhanova (b. 1984, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan) presents a new commission centred around the concept of portals. In Central Asian culture historically, it was believed that the spirits of ancestors occupied the threshold of people’s homes—specifically the traditional yurt’s frame. Also a grounding element, the entrance, as a portal, speaks to our very origins: where we were born.
Visual artist Dariya Temirkhan (b. 2000, Oral, Kazakhstan) presents a new commission, the video work Who guards your dreams (2025), based on a legend of dragons who have previously been water spirits, alongside a series of watercolours depicting snakes and dragons. These installations, created specifically for Tselinny Center, are standalone works that engage in dialogue with other participants’ practices during the performance.
Other artists participating in the opening programme include Samrattama, a musical artist and poet from Kazakhstan and the independent music label qazaq indie featuring artists Balkhash snitsya, dudeontheguitar, Steppe Sons and lovozero; as well as Zere, a Kyrgyz singer and songwriter, and Saadet Türköz, an internationally-renowned experimental vocal artist.
Two exhibitions run concurrently to the opening programme: an architectural exhibition exploring the transformation of Tselinny from a Soviet-era cinema to a multifunctional arts space, From Sky to Earth: Tselinny by Asif Khan, curated by historian and curator of architecture, Markus Lähteenmäki; and Documentation: Imagination of Central Asia on the Map of Contemporary Art, an archival exhibition curated by Asel Rashidova exploring the Tselinny Documentation project, a digital data set that collects and gives public access to archives of Central Asia from 1985.
The second edition of the Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale takes place from May 7 to June 28, 2026. Initiated by Tselinny, the Triennale is dedicated to contemporary forms of sound art, performative listening practices, experimental and avant-garde music. The second edition of the Triennale is curated by Stas Shärifulla, also known as HMOT, an artist-researcher based in Basel working with sound and decoloniality and Tselinny team members; it is rooted in the understanding that Central Asian, Turkic, North Asian, and many other cultures in the broader region are fundamentally auditory, with oral and listening traditions historically taking precedence over written ones. Approximately 20 artists, predominantly from Central and North Asia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, will take part. For the curatorial text and full list of participants, visit korkut.tselinny.org.
Activities, events and performances taking place in autumn 2025 beyond the opening programme include an inclusive performance by Deistvie Bukvalno Laboratory, the first inclusive theatre laboratory in Central Asia; the Histories of Tselinny film programme, offering alternative trajectories of film history and centring Tselinny’s past as cinema venue; as well as a presentation of publications such as Kulshat Medeuova’s “Baikonur vs Baikonyr” and a new edition of Madina Tlostanova’s Decoloniality of Knowledge, Being and Sensing (2020).
