Asel Kadyrkhanova
Asel Kadyrkhanova is a visual artist and researcher; currently, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. She holds a PhD from the University of Leeds (2021), and an MFA from Newcastle University (2011).
Kadyrkhanova’s art-based research looks at art as a medium of memory with a specific focus on cultural memory and trauma in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. As a postgeneration artist, she addresses traumatic inheritance – the burden of silenced undocumented pasts and unmourned personal losses.
She works across drawing, painting, textile, installation art and moving image. She finds interest in the concepts of embodiment, haptic visuality, place and language, with many of her works offering evocative metaphors to address lasting totalitarian and colonial legacies.