Gulnur Mukazhanova’s Felt-Making as Philosophy |
Gulnur Mukazhanova, False Hope or Moment of the Present, 2018. Photo: Visual Voices, Image courtesy: CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile), Hong Kong
Gulnur Mukazhanova wants the felt to disappear. “On a technical level,” the artist tells me. “Until your eyes no longer need to work. Your heart does.” We spoke shortly after the opening of “Dowry of the Soul,” her first major institutional survey, curated by Wang Weiwei, which brings together more than one hundred works unfolding across multiple floors of the former thread-spinning factory turned museum.
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See all of our newslettersI first heard Mukazhanova’s name by word of mouth, late one night, over smoky tea, at the kitchen table of the art historian Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek. Low voices, low light. There were raw waters beneath everything that winter. Almaty, Ziyabek’s hometown, was reeling from deadly protests. Our sentences felt pinned in place, softened by occasional laughter. She spoke of her research on memory and artists’ practices following the collapse of the U.S.S.R., how the yurt and other nomadic dwellings were to become a metaphorical membrane to safeguard rich histories and traditions erased during the Soviet era. It was here that she mentioned the Kazakh artist Gulnur Mukazhanova.
Of late, Mukazhanova has gained international prominence, turning........