Almagul Menlibayeva

KAZAKHSTAN/NETHERLANDS, 1969

With her single-channel video Queens (2009) especially commissioned for Tarjama/ Translation by the Queens Museum of Art, Almagul Menlibayeva continues an ongoing investigation, examining the convergence of traditional and contemporary culture. In this project, Menlibayeva explores personal narratives of immigrants and their descendants who have relocated to the New York City borough of Queens from various regions around the globe, including Central Asia, Afghanistan, South Korea, Greece and Eastern Europe. Using the subway throughout the video as a symbol for their reality, she combines documentary footage of daydreaming and sleeping residents on the 7 train (sometimes referred to as the “Asian Express”) with staged portraiture. Splicing scenes of private and public settings (a diner and a home), episodes of events (a wedding party) and accounts of individuals (Bukharan musicians, Persian painters and Afghani dancers), Menlibayeva translates archetypal stories into a shared ubiquity. While literally representing a single borough, in universal terms her work is a testimony to the idea that diversity becomes the foundation for a rich culture by keeping individual traditions alive.

Almagul Menlibayeva conceives mythological narratives based upon cultural traditions and the nomadic heritage in the steppes of her native Kazakhstan. She uses the industrial ruins of the region’s communist past during the Soviet era,

scripting her characters into a complex visual tale. Often her work addresses the uprooting and dislocation of civilizations on a global scale, as in her single-channel video Exodus (2009). Most recently, Menlibayeva has been working with symbols of shamanistic practices, guiding the viewer into a dimension where ancient fears and desires play out the strength of a universal mythology. In her three-channel video Kurban (2009), Menlibayeva’s female figures hover continuously between Aphrodite, Medea and Peri, a powerful inner earth goddess, part witch, part fairy, in early Persian mythology. Using Greek legends, religious metaphors and ancient Central Asian symbolism, Menlibayeva transmutes these mythological and historical accounts by assigning traditionally male-dominated roles to her women and their various engagements as Goddess/Priestess/Peri.

Courtesy of Priska C. Juschka Fine Art