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). The artist 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.)