Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon
Official Pavilion of the Republic of Kazakhstan at the 60th Venice Biennale

The Republic of Kazakhstan proudly presents its second pavilion with the "Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon" exhibition at the Biennale Arte 2024. This exhibition, located at the historic building of the Museo Storico Navale, offers a modern interpretation of the ancient legend of Jerūiyq, inspired by Kazakh legends and the visionary journey of XV-century philosopher Asan Kaigy.

Commissioned by Aida Balayeva, the Minister of Culture and Information, and curated by Danagul Tolepbay with co-curator Anvar Musrepov, the exhibition reflects Kazakhstan's commitment to cultural heritage and artistic innovation.

"Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon" aligns with the Biennale Arte 2024 main theme "Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere", curated by Adriano Pedrosa, focusing on the concept of the “Other” and diverse cultural narratives.

Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon
Pavilion of the Republic of Kazakhsta - 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia

Historical Building of the Museo Storico Navale
Riva S. Biasio Castello, 2148, Venezia

Curators: Danagul Tolepbay, Anvar Musrepov
Participants: Kamil Mullashev, Yerbolat Tolepbay, Saken Narynov (1946-2023), Sergey Maslov (1952-2002), The2vvo (Eldar Tagi and Lena Pozdnyakova), Anvar Musrepov.

More info: kazakhstanpavilion2024.kz

Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon at the Biennale Arte 2024 presents a visionary future where human and non-human entities converge in a reimagined utopia. In our era of postcolonial world status and geopolitical turbulence, mass migration has emerged as a persistent trend. This calls for the reimagining of narratives that have been invisible. This exhibition invites visitors to explore portals into imaginative worlds, space flights, futuristic rituals, and the intersection of topology and algorithms. Showcasing art from Kazakhstani artists since 1979, it reflects the evolution of utopian thought, decolonial futurism, spirituality, modernism, and cosmism. Join us at the historic Maritime Museum for the opening reception of "Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon", a transformative exhibition that redefines art, culture, and imagination, celebrating Kazakhstan's rich heritage in a global context.

Artists in the Kazakhstan Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale

Danagul Tolepbay

Danagul Tolepbay graduated from City University London in 2004 with a Master's degree in Business Administration. She has completed number of history of arts and art management courses in Kazakhstan and Sotheby's Institute of Art. She comes from a dynasty of important artists of Kazakhstan's fine art. An important aspect of her work is popularizing art education in Kazakhstan. Since 2018, she has dedicated herself to the development and promotion of Kazakhstani art, locally and internationally.

Curatorial Statement

Jerūiyq is the promised land of Kazakh legends that has reached us surviving many generations thanks to the oral tradition. It embodies the metaphor of quest, aspiration, and latent knowledge. Ancient tales of the steppe philosopher Asan Kaigy recount his endeavours to lead the nomadic people to lands free from disease and hunger—where birds weave nests on sheep’s backs, and time bestows eternal life. The word kaigy translates from Kazakh as “sadness,” and it precisely captures the essence of the in this meaning it is used in the expression “to fall into Asan Kaigy,” which features in numerous folk proverbs.

The leitmotif of sorrow is manifested in the weeping melodies of the kobyz, resonating with the numerous attempts to realise utopias in the Kazakh steppes. These include the nuclear testing craters, the desiccated Aral Sea, and other indelible scars left by the nomads’ encounter with the dark side of modernity.

Aspiration for liberating the mind defines this exposition, unveiling the chronology of utopian imagery development in the works of Kazakh artists. This process can be traced back to the 1970s when they envisioned Kazakhstan as a territory of cosmic utopias (Earth and Time. Kazakhstan by Kamil Mullashev); it continues through the works of the early contemporary art period in the country (Baikonur-2 by Sergey Maslov) and culminates in a generative multi-channel audio work with no beginning and no end that resounds connection with nature through voice and non-linear relationship with time (Presence by Eldar Tagi and Lena Pozdnyakova).

In today’s world, countless fantastical narratives rely on Western-centric stereotypes, depicting militaristic scenarios of inventing new weapons and subsequent colonisation of other planets. Departing from these, we seek alternative stories, attuning ourselves to the voices of fragile cultures that can reveal the untold tales of utopian worlds.

With the attainment of Independence, Kazakh art has received a new impetus for decolonisation and reimagining of the future, defying Soviet censorship and metropolitan orders.

The exhibition features a collection of works by artists who create their own universes. Here, drones and robots intersect with spirits and sacred rituals in Anvar Musrepov’s Alastau; nomadic culture finds expression in cosmic stations in Mobile Block by Saken Narynov, and visionary monumental paintings open portals, allowing glimpses beyond the horizon of events in New Child. Rebirth by Yerbolat Tolepbay.

In our time of perpetual turbulence, Jerūiyq becomes a guiding star on the path to overcoming the crisis of imagination.

Can you dive deeper into the main theme behind the exhibition at the Kazakhstan pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale? The title "Jerūiyq" refers to a legendary promised land. Can you elaborate on how the featured artists explore this concept?

Anvar: During the Soviet era, our imagination was occupied by the ideas of communist utopias; the vision of the future and the new world was dictated "from the top down" by the metropolis. Kazakhstani authors had no opportunity topresent their scenarios, which could differ from the dominant line. Today, 30 years after independence, local culture is experiencing a flourishing phase, which some have already called the "Kazakh renaissance"; new generations of talented artists, musicians, and film directors have had the opportunity to start from scratch, for example, to invent a local film language known as the Kazakh New Wave phenomenon, to find their unique sound in music, to find their identity in contemporary art in the absence of institutions and the art market. Now, in the period of independence, a new, young, and dynamic culture has reached a point of rethinking narratives of the future, presenting its utopias and a vision of decolonial futurism that represents an alternative to Western-centric trends and Hollywood stamps.
Here it seems relevant to quote Mark Fisher, who in his book "capitalist realism", formulated an important and extensive thesis that in today's world we can imagine thousands of scenarios for the end of the world, but not a single scenario for the end of capitalism, manifesting a global crisis of imagination.
This is why it is important today to turn to visions of other unrevealed and silent cultures to gain a more diverse understanding of the future-oriented imagination. In unfolding this idea, we drew from chronology to explore the history of ideas and images in Kazakhstani art, when artists from different periods turned to themes of utopia, futurism, or cosmism, from the 1970s (Kamil Mulashev, triptych "Earth and Time, Kazakhstan") to our time. We have divided this lineage by decade, covering different generations of artists, including the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and today, including various media, installations, painting, architectural models, expanded cinema, and sound art. These topics have never been fully explored or articulated into a specific term. Professor of Philosophy Kulshat Medeova, in her research publication on the pavilion, calls this phenomenon "Kazakh futurism", and in the history of local contemporary art, it is one of the newest terms to describe an entire body of work and create a conceptual framework that incorporates both traditional and new media.

Lena: I can speak a few words to the theme as it was read by us as artists. When we researched the meaning of the termJerūiyq, we discovered that the folklore around it accentuates the sense of yearning for a place as an underlying meaning that goes together with the land. In some way, this yearning is directly related to the overall theme of the Biennale "Foreigners everywhere," to human condition in general and to an overarching theme of envisioning the future in different situational conditions. This yearning to imagine the future by rethinking the past is certainly a part of existence in different generations. For us, as artists are interested in topics of ecology, one peculiar aspect that the folklore around Jerūiyq promises – is the land where people will fulfill their thirst, water is plenty, the soil is fertile, and the trees are bursting with fruit. (as described by Gabitov in Culturology [Kulturologiya], p.313). The paradigm now is an ecological crisis, the degradation of land that results in the loss of biodiversity, and it affects human existence, too. With this, the notion of water, land, the positionality of a human being in all this is redecorated with several visual cues shown on körpe – a traditional Kazakh quilt.
With regard to water, we know now that the future of water resources in Kazakhstan isn't bright. It will be scarce and with climate change and its exacerbated effects, the country will face hardships related to drastic environmental changes. Conversations on topics related to rethinking management systems, agricultural systems, and other high-water-expenditure-related issues would need to be brought forth for reconsideration, seeing the effects politics had on natural resources in the past. For instance, a renowned catastrophe of the Aral Sea – a lake located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan– which began shrinking in the 1960s and largely dried up by the 2010s, made Kazakhstan a world-famous case where mismanagement and demonstrated the Soviet system's flaws led to disaster and continue to affect Central Asian ecology to this day.
These motifs and scales – water bodies, land affected by human impact and practices that are driving these catastrophes are explored as part of körpe pieces located in the room and accompanying the generative sound piece.
In this context, the very notion of Jerūiyq, with its promised resources, in the discussion of the socio-political situation entangled with ecological crisis, can spark discussions beyond the art world. As artists and researchers, we explore themes that interest us, but artists have always been a bridge between the imagined and the real, driven by intuition and curiosity. The beauty of art is that it speaks in poetic language and, hence, speaks to hearts.

The press release mentions a "modern interpretation" of the Jerūiyq legend. How do the artists achieve this through their chosen mediums?

Anvar: One of the main heroes in Kazakh folklore, Asan Kyigy, was a quasi-historical character, and in different villages and regions of Kazakhstan, there are many still unwritten tales about him, about how he created miracles by interacting with space, with rivers, hills, and trees. Asan Kaigy was also an advisor to the first Kazakh khans Zhanibek and Kerey, and according to legend, he wandered the earth all his life, looking for a place where the earth fermented like milk, and this process caused a distortion of time and space.
In this place time has stopped, people do not age, do not suffer from diseases, and birds weave nests on the backs of rams, which means that there is no hunger here and people live in abundance. We turned to this legend, using it more as a framework, this legend is quite famous in Kazakhstan, and we thought that it could become our local Wakanda, embodying the intention to create our vision of the future and utopia.
The main leitmotif in the space of the pavilion is the blue filling light, which is also a reference to the legends of Kazakh nomads about twilight as the time of day when the world of spirits and the world of people come into contact and we have the opportunity to meet our ancestors and receive revelation. However, the works in the pavilion do not seek to somehow illustrate this legend, and what I consider important are independent works created by the artists themselves, ideas not subordinated to the curatorial or institutional concept, expressing personal research interests, which in one space begin to build their networks of correlations, where the theme of the closed circle of utopia and dystopia is manifested (Yerbolat Tolepbay monumental painting "New Child. rebirth", painting "War," "Kamil Mullashev "Time and space. Kazakhstan", Anvar Musrepov film 'Alastau'), non-human agents producing sacral ritual (Lena Pozdnyakova and Eldar Tagi), projects developing ideas of life on other planets (architectural model' Mobile Block' by Saken Narynov), and even the first sci-fi essay inspired by Kazakh nomadic culture as part of the installation Baikanur 2 (Sergey Maslov).

The exhibition showcases work from established and emerging artists. How does this selection create a conversation about the evolution of Kazakh art?

Anvar: In this exhibition, we explore how the futurological imagination has evolved over more than 50 years, from painting to installations and algorithms, and by placing these works from different periods of history on the same line, we have outlined a new phenomenon that is beginning to enter art history and other academic disciplines under the term "Kazakh Futurism". Different generations and different mediums demystify the intentions of artists from the Central Asian region to explore transcendental themes, global vision, and their sense of the future and to find their own identity and character manifested in all the media presented in the exhibition.

Several artists have international recognition. How does their inclusion contribute to the overall message of the exhibition, particularly about the Biennale theme "Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere"?

Anvar: In our opinion, the theme "Foreigners Everywhere" strongly resonates with the exhibition "Zheruik: Looking Beyond the Horizon", the theme of searching for the promised land, aspirations for a better life, the feeling of being away from home, the complex intertwined destinies and seeded histories, in connection with the tragic history of Kazakhstan, associated with the forced deportation of peoples, these themes remain relevant and unexplored.
The focus on the rethinking of modernism in the art of the Great South seemed to be an important and interesting theme, and the museum approach chosen by Adriano Pedrosa in the creation of the main exhibition was also a crossroads. In our pavilion, we also decided to show not only contemporary art but also bright representatives of modernism in Kazakhstan.When talking about the Kazakhstani art of the 20th century, despite the large number of engaged works praising the Soviet regime, it is not correct to generalize this period and claim that all productions were subordinated to the political conjuncture. Since 1960, Kazakhstani artists have been actively searching for their own identity in art, and this is a unique situation where former nomads with a rich history of applied art began to paint, comprehending the period of modernism through the prism of their own identity.

**Yerbolat Tolepbay**, *The End of the World*, oil on canvas, 183x162 cm, 1985

**Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon**, Official Pavilion of the Republic of Kazakhstan at the 60th Venice Biennale- Photo: Ilaria Zago, Courtesy of the Kazakhstan Pavilion

Lena: I think there couldn't be a better theme for us to participate in. The theme embraces different angles of what one could call alienation, an experience of being othered. It touches on the topics of displacement, migration, and movement overall.
For Kazakhstan, this topic is important on several levels. On the one hand, traditionally and in pre-colonial times, many Central Asian cultures were nomadic in nature. The cycle of movement around the land following the signs of the natural environment allowed for centuries of life in both resiliency and hardship at once. This changed with the fortification of the Russian Empire and later with the Soviet period, changing the socio-political reality of the region.
The Soviet regime brought in one of the darkest chapters in Kazakhstan's history –Stalinist repressions and the devastating famine of the 1930s. Millions of people, including women and children, were sent to Kazakhstan to work in camps and suffered greatly under unbearable conditions of forced dislocation, poor work, and living environments. andthe country became an integral part of the Gulag system as the host of several major labor camps, such as Steplag, Karlag, and ALZHIR.
As a result of this dark Soviet chapter, however, Kazakhstan inherited an incredible cultural and ethnic diversity –Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Germans, Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Uyghurs, Koreans, and Meskhetian Turks, among others. Many people have mixed-ethnic identities and have numerous cultural influences within one family and friends cycle. Also, due to the centralized system of rule, many people from other Soviet Republics later moved around the Soviet Union, settling in its different corners.
My family has also suffered from repressions and forced collectivization from both my mother's and my father's side. Since childhood, I've felt that my identity was fractured—a result of mixed ethnic roots, a family history of displacement, the experience of having a feminized body in a Central Asian country, choosing an artistic path, along with my interest towards the connectivity of different cultures and worldviews—all of which drove me away from Central Asia. Now,living far from my homeland, I experience a different kind of displacement. I exist between several places, constantly in transition. Despite the privileges of studying and working abroad, I'm still being pulled from place to place, trapped in a loop of movement, which I associate with the effects of postmemory. According to Marianne Hirsch, postmemory emerges as an embodied experience in the generations following a traumatic event, shaped by the transmission of knowledge across time. Generational trauma unfolds as difficult events are relived both collectively and personally. Hirsch explains that "remembering" in subsequent generations is formed by stories passed down and is often triggered by the surrounding environment linked to the history of those events. Postmemory, as a symbolic transgenerational act of memory, forges a connection across generations through a personal, embodied relationship with both the present and the past. That's another theme that I am exploring with my work as an artist.
However, as the saying goes, "there are two sides to every coin." This fragmented sense of identity has also given me the opportunity to live among other cultures and encounter countless stories of displacement, freedom, identity, and kinship. Engaging with the world this way has allowed me to rethink the notion of "Motherland."
This brings me to another aspect of reading the notion of "Foreigners everywhere" as an extremely timely theme that the event puts forth –the aspect of us feeling separate from our environments. Considering that we are overwhelmingly feeling the effects of global warming, the notion of "home" or "boundary" of one country's confined borders is no longer responding to the demands of its time. While we can share patriotic feelings, we nevertheless share the planetary ecology – convivial and entangled between all of its inhabitants (human and non-human). In this sense, an expanded perspective of what we call in Kazakhstan "Umai" (a goddess of fertility, land, earth, soil)—once rooted in a specific country—for me now stretches across the planet. It encompasses the entire range of ecosystems that sustain life on Earth. Just as Umai is revered in Central Asia as a nurturing force, it reminds us that when carefully attended to, it feeds us, shelters us, and provides a home for us and future generations.
Therefore, upon closer inspection of the pieces in the Pavillion of Kazakhstan, artists involved and their personal stories, the exhibition seems to respond perfectly to the call towards "Foreigners everywhere" to express themselves. And there is a lot to learn from it about the country and its people's view about the past and present.

The pavilion's location is also crucial. How did you choose the Museo Storico Navale, and how does the space's historical context resonate with the Jerūiyq theme?

Anvar: The space that we reconstructed for the exhibition was the first to be used for an exhibition, and the location of the museum is at the epicenter of the Biennale, a few minutes between the Giardini and the Arsenale. Of course, the history of seafaring is directly linked to the history of colonialism, and we found it interesting to talk about the decolonial theme and our resistance to the status quo Eurocentrism from inside the space of a military museum in a city that is so deeply connected to the history of colonialism, still reminiscent of it even through the handles on the doors of some houses, in the form of worshipping Black People. Such exhibitions, held in locations with complex contexts, reveal situations of global change; those old-world attitudes that once seemed unshakable are now reminded of a dark past only through history, and such projects that critically examine concepts that seem universal to us, ideas that challenge the very understanding of the universality of meanings, promoting diversity and acceptance especially resonate in places with such a contextual frame.

Let's now focus on your project, "Presence." It explores throat singing traditions alongside digital elements. How does this merge highlight the relationship between Kazakh heritage and the contemporary world?

Eldar: The evolution of humans and technology is deeply entwined in the sense that we transform and change one another. Technology is a reflection that mimics us and simultaneously grants a level of awareness about what we are. It is not uncommon for humans to act like machines and for machines to appear rather human. Music is a perfect example of this, as in the modern world, we perfectly enjoy music made with machines and by machines. The sound still touches us and affects our emotional state.
Voice is a particularly interesting phenomenon. First, it is the only instrument that is inseparable from our bodies, and it plays a big part in defining both the individual and wider identities of its carriers. In the case of music, it was the original musical instrument, predating even the earliest bone flutes by thousands of years. It is also an instrument that we share with many other species of animals, and as it happens, one of the earliest attempts to make electronic music was focusedon teaching the machines to sing. Homer Dudley's Voder and Max Methews' "A Bicycle Built for Two" are a couple ofexamples.
Throat singing practice is one of the most distinct vocal practices in Kazakhstan and the wider Central Asian region. Moreso, the varieties of the practice spread worldwide, manifesting in cultures seemingly as diverse as Sardinian Cantu a Tenore to South African Thembu Xhosa Umngqokolo overtone singing, making the practice uniquely local and global, ancient and modern. Abzal Arykbayev, the singer whose voice was used in the production of the installation, carries a distinct regional tradition of the technique. We deeply believe that ancestry is carried in our bodies, and for us, Abzal's voice thus carries generations upon generations of sonic memory that he releases into the present world.
For this project, rather than fully substituting the human aspect with artificial intelligence algorithms, we opted for a more transhuman scenario, where Abzal's recorded voice drives both live synthesis and spatialization processes across 8 channels. The outcome is supposed to be this envelope of sound, a voice that is permanently in a liminal state, at times deeply familiar, and at other moments distant and alien. The multichannel aspect also suggests that your own location in the room matters for the experience, as by moving through the space you are changing the focus.
Then, there is an aspect of disembodiment. With the performer hidden from sight, and only present through sound we hoped to emphasize the ephemerality of the connections we make between temporal aspects of the experience (past, present, future), as well as blur the perceptual line between real and imagined.
This brings me to the last point, which mainly concerns the unique character of throat singing. The multiphonic, overtone-rich sound produced by this technique was traditionally developed to imitate natural phenomena like wind, rivers, and thunderstorms, as well as the voices of animals such as birds and wolves. But in the twenty-first century, the sound at times resembles synthetic sounds, thus naturally lending itself to be a great source of the work.

**Yerbolat Tolepbay**, *New Child. Rebirth*, 300 x 660 cm, 2023-2024

**Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon**, Official Pavilion of the Republic of Kazakhstan at the 60th Venice Biennale- Photo: Ilaria Zago, Courtesy of the Kazakhstan Pavilion

The "Presence" project utilizes a traditional körpe quilt. How does this object serve as a metaphor for the exhibition's central themes?

Lena: We wanted for people to stay longer in the space, to actively participate and contribute to the pavilion. And wewere also curious if they actually would engage with the traditional kazakh mats – körpe.
Regardless of ethnic background, and regardless of whether people speak the Kazakh language or not, everyone in Kazakhstan knows the word körpe. For us, it is a place where one can rest and enjoy the company of people, relax, lie down, and have a nap. However, in Kazakh culture, there are different types of korpe. For instance, there is a saddle pad mat – an atkorpe atkorpe and a cradle mat – besik korpe, or blanket like jamylghy korpe. The typology that the artwork employs is that of tosek korpe – an elongated mat encased in fabric adorned with traditional ornaments.
The intention in this part of the installation was to bring in an element familiar to everyone in Kazakhstan and yet invoke with it a sense of transiency. These kinds of mats were extremely useful attributes during migration times. They are easily rolled and compact enough to transport anywhere, and most importantly, beyond being a simply utilitarian object, they carry an identity through ornamentation. Ornamentation that featured elements traditional to Kazakh culture depicts the expression of the natural environment and elements of animal bodies. In other words, similarly to throat singing, these objects were used to connect to the surrounding ecologies and communities at once.
With this, the visual component created for the show – ornamented with collages mats, are adding both spatial and conceptual elements to the listening environment. One side of the körpe features a broad, undetailed image of Kazakhstan's natural landscape. The reverse side presents a collage that overlays cultural patterns onto the landscape, incorporating elements such as the traditional calendar, migration cycles, human-animal relationships, and the impact of human settlement on the topography.

Anvar: I am currently working on a text for an art magazine, and I am considering this work in the context of new optics on the sacred, the church of neural networks, and the integration of technology in religion, "Presence" is a landmark and innovative work that opens up a new and still nascent perspective of sound art for the Kazakhstan context. In essence, we encounter an algorithm that produces a space of the sacred through sound and new technologies, enhancing the immersive effect and sending the audience into a space of ritual, where throat singing has traditionally been the practice of shamans who use this unique vocal technique to communicate with the spirits of nature, wind, fire, water, and animals. The generative code becomes the shaman, restimulating and communicating with our modern and man-made ecosystem in need of healing.

Ultimately, what do you aim to communicate to viewers with Presence? And how does your project relate to the general theme of the Biennale, "Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere"?

Eldar: With Presence, our aim is to create a space for connection—connection with oneself, with culture, with the environment, and with technology. By stepping outside of conventional concepts of time, we wanted to question our position as individuals, as nations, and as humanity in the face of an evolving environment that continually reminds us of our intrinsic interconnectedness.
We revisit a vocal practice that appears to be as ancient as it is modern to create a transient sculpture that is unseen yet continuously perceivable within the resonating architecture of the space. The voice, feeding and driving the synthesis algorithms, echoes back to the body—familiar yet transformed. It's a reflection on continuity: much like how our lives have transformed over millennia of movement and cultural shifts, the core structures remain. Whether we carve images into rock or program computers, certain expressions—like a deep, resonant hum—elicit a timeless, visceral response that seems to interlink time, space, and even species.

Lena: The visual artwork points to this very notion by means of juxtaposition. It points to the inherent anthropocentric positioning of a human being in the natural environment – being a "foreigner everywhere" through the images of the Central Asian landscapes photographed from space on the one hand, and then zoomed-in elements that address the temporal and cyclical nature of existence through the lens of and cultural motifs.
The choice of imagery—spanning the vast steppes, serene lakes, towering mountains, sprawling deserts, and bustling cities—draws from a zoomed-out perspective of documentation of Central Asia from afar, allowing for a glance at the vastness of local ecology. However, if the viewer recognizes or researches the sires, these perspectives, both macro (zoom out) and micro (zoom in), offer a nuanced and complex narrative of human interaction with the environment that often has devastating ecological effects.

How do you expect "Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon" to impact the international perception of contemporary Kazakh art?

Anvar: As part of the Kazakhstan Pavilion project, we have initiated several academic studies and organized a residency for young artists, part of which will be a viewing of the pavilion and a critical review of the Venice Biennale. Over the last 30 years, the Kazakh contemporary art project has formalized and acquired its own identity, but until now, we have not had a definite term that manifests a particular theme or movement in local art. It is hoped that the pavilion project will be an impulse for further exploration and the growing network of artists and intellectuals fascinated by the ideas of "Kazakh futurism", and the search for alternative narratives and a sense of the future. This is only the second experience of Kazakhstan's official participation in the Venice Biennale program, but it is already clear that our art community has many ideas, works, and knowledge that can be interesting in the framework of international dialogue.

Lastly, how was your overall experience with the Venice Biennale? Any future projections of the project to share with our readers?

Anvar: Within the pavilion, we had limited opportunities to show all the works related to the theme of the exhibition. Of course, there are many more, and in the perspective of the project, we plan to organize an anthology exhibition, where we will be able to show a complete collection of works related to the themes of the pavilion. In addition, we have organized an art residency for artists and researchers, which will result in a series of new works, as well as a conference on the theme of future studies. We plan to develop a discussion on the decolonization of the future, with the participation of artists, scientists, filmmakers, and other intellectuals, beyond the institutional limitations of contemporary art.