An Interview with Nurbol Nurakhmet

“Studying, Researching, Taking Skin Off, Cutting in Half, Analysing by Taking Apart and Synthesizing by Putting Back Together, Not Necessarily in the Right Order”

An Interview with Nurbol Nurakhmet

After a residency in Paris with International Art Development Association (IADA), curatorial assistant Phoebe Bradley-White met virtually with artist Nurbol Nurakhmet to discuss his recent works and practices.

Phoebe Bradley-White (PBW): Hi Nurbol. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me and share your practice with Ainalaiyn Space. I wanted to open our discussion today by thinking about the present moment that we’re all experiencing. How do you think the past few years have influenced your work and the themes you want to explore?

Nurbol Nurakhmet (NN): Well, my process is kind of a blind process, because some of my ideas are just floating around and I just pick it and then try it on a flat surface, to see how it will turn out. The process itself is the most important part, only after a few months I realised that lately I’m onto something, some narrative is starting to appear. But in general, I realised that painting is a part of me, whatever you experience, the situation that you live in suddenly becomes something that you must capture on canvas.

A month ago, I saw a burning building and I went to look closer. The flames were embracing the building so passionately. It was a very powerful image, now I think about it a lot.

PBW: So, who or what would you say has had the most profound impact on how you make art, particularly for your most recent works?

NN: It’s a tricky question because most of the time, when I look around to see what other artists are working on, there are so many good artists but then again, I find those whose works catch me are those with expression and narrative side by side. Recently, I discovered Michael Armitage. I like his concept and sort of primitive style, moody and calm colours. Somehow, I felt connected to what he was saying in his paintings.

There are so many good artists, but there are not so many living painters that I admire. Gerhard Richter is definitely one, who gave me an idea to work with a palette knife.

PBW: I would be fascinated to know more about your working process. Do you have an image and composition in mind or that you sketch out before you start working, or does it organically come to you as you’re working?

NN: It’s not consistent, sometimes I have a clear idea, sometimes I have only an image. I never have a finished painting in mind, only an idea, and I never get hundred percent close to what was in my mind.

PBW: Why do you think it is so important to be making art now, not only within the contemporary moment globally but within the context of Kazakhstan?

NN: Art is always important, as well it’s coming from the right place. If you do your work and your heart is in the right place, I think there will be some people who can really appreciate it. Not that appreciation is so important, maybe more of an awareness to share. Me, myself, I’m always feeling useless and I’m just doing it because I want it, and I’m not sure that it’s important.

PBW: These recent works are connected to the idea of the panopticon, could you explain how you came to think about this theme and decide to explore it in these works?

NN: I was always concerned with the fact that we are always under surveillance, whatever we say or do is under control. We became slaves to the capitalistic machine. But even when we are not using technologies and stay in a room alone, we are starting to guard ourselves, trying self-discipline and even punishment. That is when I realize that it’s not just the hierarchical system that gives you the power to watch over somebody but it’s inside us.

PBW: I was so intrigued by the recurrence of protest throughout your work, why do you think this idea is so significant to your work and the current contexts that you are working in?

NN: Because I’ve seen better life, better society, with humbleness and peace in mind. That is something that I wish to be everywhere. It’s the twenty-first century and yet we still have to watch breaking new on how a few people’s decisions can cause the war, back-to-back with reality when some people are building spaceships to Mars. It’s reality when today you have to protest that more than two hundred and fifty people have been killed, and the next day you have to swallow your pain and go to work. There is no exit, even those artists who paint only still lives or beautiful landscapes are saying that the reality is too harsh so they want to meditate on something peaceful while they paint.

PBW: Your work frequently features the body, whether that be the human body, the animal body, or the bodies of classical western art. Could you tell me more about why the body is central to your practice, and what these new works are expressing about these bodies? 

NN: The body is a main subject to my work, whether it’s a small figure in open or closed space, or just a close up as a fragment. I’m a big fan of figures as physical and visual objects, that have not only appearance but a much more complicated state of being. It’s something that I’m still studying, researching, taking skin off, cutting in half, analyzing by taking apart and synthesizing by putting back together, not necessarily in the right order. I think all that digging has something to do with curiosity to finally find out the truth about human being. That will tell us something about our identity or to find its soul, or another form.

PBW: Through your art-making, have you found that these different bodies (human, animal, art historical) raise different ideas and questions, or do they have similarities and connections that you can tell us more about? 

NN: There are similarities in terms of relationship. They have a different form and shape, and context, each of them might be raising different ideas, but the one thing they have in common is that they are mostly in the state of the victim.

PBW: I was amazed by the transformation of the bodies that feature in the work, Cosmonauts, could you tell me more about how this transformation came to be?

NN: I was looking at some photos from the latest protests [in Kazakhstan] where poses of the protestors were so disturbing and the soldiers that were carrying them were dressed in camouflage. That gave me the idea that soldiers are supposed to be invisible. I drew some of them without soldiers and they looked like they were levitating through the space, no gravity, no pressure, just pure romance.  

PBW: Your works create such atmospheric spaces that captivate and intrigue their audiences. How important are the ideas of space, place and atmosphere in your work?

NN: I try to play around with space so images could be not so obvious or, for example, create artificial light during day time. Sometimes, I let light form the space by casting shadows and picking some surfaces from the dark. It’s very important because it’s the habitat for my figures.

PBW: The figure and the body are important aspects of your work, but I wonder if you could also think of landscapes as equally important? I found myself thinking about the different landscapes we inhabit – our emotions, memory and interior psyche as a kind of landscape; the body as a political landscape; the socio-political landscape of Kazakhstan; the urban and rural landscapes of Kazakhstan – these landscapes are not as visually obvious in your works, but I wondered if you could tell me about the significance of landscapes in your practice?

NN: I did a few painting series on cityscapes. Some of them have small human figures and one of them has only a small monument image on the bottom. In these paintings I used artificial light and daylight, to confuse and show that it’s not natural, it’s a set up. It is about transit places, where protest appeared in the past, and every time you visit or are passing by these places you have that memory which teleports you right into the protests and you get mixed feelings. Landscape is important as well, I see it as an environment, a space of information.

PBW: I also found the formal qualities such as colour and light to be so striking in your work. Can you tell me about how you use colour and light in your works? Who or what inspires you? Why do you choose specific colours and create different lightings?

NN: My latest works have that vibrant colour, it’s a bit unusual for my previous works. I wanted to fill the air with intensity and fluidity of energy that everybody is ready to pour out, but they can’t because it’s prohibited. But eventually, it exploded in January. So it is another way of screaming out loud, getting noticed, getting heard.

PBW: Is there anything that has surprised you or emerged subconsciously or unexpectantly in these new works?

NN: Yes, I always say that I’m not a smart person, but my unconscious is getting much closer to the things that seem right. I wasn’t sure of so many things that I did in my paintings, but it turned out coherently connected to each other, and I can see it much clearer now.

PBW: How do you hope audiences will react to your newest works? What ideas, conversations and affects do you hope your works will spark in the viewer?

NN: I have no clue, I just hope that my paintings will have their own viewer. After all my part is done, and they can never be a painting unless someone will look at them. Otherwise it’s just a stretched or scrolled canvas with some paint in it.

PBW: A final and quite general question, which I hope will encapsulate your outlook towards art making; what does art mean to you?

NN: According to all the books that we have today, art is part of our life, it’s a history. But frankly speaking I’m not sure that I understand art. I have a friend next door, and sometimes he comes over to have lunch together. We then talk about how we hate art, how we are disgusted by artists, philosophers, directors and all the people who worship them. At the end he leaves with the words – Ok, I better get back to my painting. So I guess I don’t know what it is, but it's beautiful, and I’m in love.

Nurbol Nurakhmet (b. 1986) is a Kazakh artist, working in painting, collage, drawing and lithography. He lives and works in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where he trained at the Kazakh National Academy of Art. He also studied at the Academy of Art at the University of San Francisco in the USA, from 2010-2012.

Nurakhmet’s work demonstrates how the depiction of the body can convey both the complex inner world of the individual and the socio-political climate of a nation. In this way, his work oscillates between the personal and the collective. Nurakhmet’s figures are often depicted nude, with obscured features, or without skin or heads. This unnerving depiction of the human figure alludes to the violation of human rights in Kazakhstan and the experienced loss of identity, histories and cultures. The artist also explores the cultural history of his native country by planting cultural and political figures within his work. Yet, reflecting on the state of the Kazakh nation in this contemporary global moment, the artist often depicts locations that are places of both leisure and protests in Kazakhstan’s recent past.

Nurakhmet has been included in exhibitions internationally, including Eurasian Utopia: Post Scriptum at the Suwon I’Park Museum of Art (2018, Suwon, South Korea), At the Corner: City, Place, People at the Tselinny Centre for Contemporary Culture (2018, Almaty, Kazakhstan), and Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan at the Yarat (2017, Baku, Azerbaijan). Nurakhmet has also held solo exhibitions, including Unconscious in A. Kasteev Museum of Arts (2014, Almaty, Kazakhstan) and most recently, Nurbol Nurakhmet: Split in Aspan Gallery (2019, Almaty, Kazakhstan.)