Zhaniya Amantayeva

I work with mixed media, combining oil painting with found objects and installation. My practice explores bereavement, mourning, and cultural erasure through material contrast. These tensions mirror a state of sorrow that still holds the possibility of cultural revival. My installations are intentionally immersive and confrontational, forcing the viewer to face the uncomfortable realities of post-colonial trauma. Drawing from my personal and ancestral experiences of racism within my own country, I investigate how violence can occur not only physically but culturally through the erasure of memory, language, and tradition. A feeling of enslavement through torture and stripped of memory acts as a central metaphor in my work. Forgetting one’s roots becomes a method of depersonalisation and, ultimately, the destruction of a nation.

Through material, scale, and spatial arrangement, I aim to communicate the weight of national identity, not as blind patriotism or nationalism, but as an urgent act of remembrance. My intention is for viewers not only to see this pain, but to feel it, and to reflect on what is lost when collective memory is erased. I am an artists from Kazakhstan, post-soviet country in central Asia, born in 2003, 12 years after independence.

I create mixed media installations that explore Kazakh identity, memory and cultural resistance. Using sculpture, pattern, found materials and spatial arrangement, I build environments that invite viewers to move through symbols connected to history and belonging. My key themes are identity, freedom, memory, tradition and power.

This installation unpacks Kazakh culture while responding to forms of continuing political and cultural oppression. Each pattern carries meaning linked to freedom, self-possession, the recovery of memory and good luck. Traditional symbols are used not as decoration, but as active forms of knowledge. They remind viewers of their roots and wherever they live, of the value of honouring traditions.

My process begins with research into Kazakh symbolism, history and current politics. I then select materials and forms that can communicate these ideas clearly through space. The work also comments on the new constitution and ongoing limits on freedom of speech. I use installation because it allows people to physically experience tension, pride and remembrance.