Page 84 - Steppe - Aigana Gali

68
London
It is worth keeping this in mind when considering the place from which the artist currently choses to work. The contrast between what she makes and
where she makes it is stark, and belies a need to confront or overcome diculty in solitude and through darkness. Perhaps this is what prompted Aigana’s move to London in 2005, just as she was gaining recognition at home.
“Before I moved to London, I found myself in a vacuum in Kazakhstan. Having made a film, I lost my anonymity; when I went out, I was recognised, and I found this too distracting. So I hid away in my studio and just worked all the time. When you are recognised by people, they give you masks to wear and project onto you what they want you to be... It highlighted what was happening to my land, how my country was changing, and I did not want this to enter my space. I now understand that’s why Georgia O’Keefe ran away.”
Aigana understood this was the moment to leave, to begin again, somewhere foreign and complex “where I was nobody, unrecognisable, silent”. During her first year in London, Aigana taught herself English on visits alone to the museums, listening to audio guides “trying to understand, writing down the words I did not know” whilst also painting in a rented studio. Over 12 months she completed a series of about 40 paintings entitled LEDA. “This series loosely depicts a personal story, but it probably represents the end of my personal message in painting.” It was then that Aigana started to feel intensely homesick.
“I was missing my land, but what I was missing most of all was the sun, and sunlight. From that moment, I knew I had to depict this empty space - and then I realised something very basic: if not for the sun, my paintings (the whole world we see and colour) would not exist. If we switched o the light of the sun, my paintings would be grey - black and white - I understood that all this time I was depicting the sunlight. This huge projector, it casts our lives on the walls of the cave... It is only through reflection that we can see the true nature of the sun.”