Nurbol Nurakhmet
Nurbol Nurakhmet is a young Kazakhstani painter, who paints portraits, still-lives and scenes of everyday life. He has also been actively working with collage, both traditional and digital. At first glance, his paintings appear quite innocent, yet further study reveals a deep problematic inherent in them. The portrayed male and female figures appear silenced and blinded in reference to the violation of human rights in the artist’s native country. The ‘postcard perfect’ cityscapes seem to be captured in day time, yet the lighting is explicitly artificial, like in a theatre, revealing the inner conflict of the depicted sights as places for leisure and as places where violent protests took place in the recent past. Nurakhmet is interested in both personal and collective memories and creates powerful statements about the cultural, political and social climate of Central Asia.
Notable recent exhibitions include Eurasian Utopia: Post Scriptum at the Suwon I'Park Museum of Art in Suwon (2018), At the Corner: City, Place, People at the Tselinny Centre for Contemporary Culture in Almaty (2018) Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan at the Yarat in Baku (2017).