Page 82 - Steppe - Aigana Gali

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Cultural Duality
Aigana’s mother is Georgian, and her father is Kazakh, a cultural duality that was compounded by Kazakhstan’s nuanced,
complicated history with Russia. In some ways this might explain the artist's natural ability to transcend cultural boundaries, but what sets her apart is an awareness of what each gave her, and an understanding of what she needed to leave behind. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times. In 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Whilst she went through the numerous educational systems, she did not become a product of any, but took what she needed, and respectfully appreciates the many ways it benefited he.r
When I did my masters degree, my thesis was on “The Influence of Russian Academic school of Painting to Kazakh School”, but the fact is a Kazakh school never existed because we were a shamanic tribe, the symbols we painted (on cloaks) we not for fine art but part of our folk tradition. Then I learnt about Aiganem - the wife of the tribal leader Wali - who invited painters from Russia to teach her children and grandchildren. So in a way, she was the root of Kazakh fine art, and I was given her name.
I am product of a collaboration: the importation of a very strict Soviet academic school and a living folk tradition. I can travel from one technique to the next, as my hands are so well practiced, but the root of my practice lies underneath this in the Scythian tradition - in shamanic ritual.”
Historically inhabited by nomads, the name "Kazakh" comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, "to wander", and the Persian sux -stan means "land" or "place of", so Kazakhstan can be literally translated as "land of the wanderers”. It was in looking back at Kazakhstan’s peripatetic history that Aigana found a way forwards, and began to express the essential, transient nature of the steppe through the universal language of paint. Which brings us to that moment of wonder, in a nameless studio cave somewhere hidden in London. Just as Turgenev showed us in his short story The Singers, those who truly embody or express the spirit of a place transcend its limits and become emblems of their culture for a wider audience. These paintings pulse with the artist’s love for and lived experience of her land, and skilfully capture the immensity of these emotions so that we can glimpse them too.