Sabina Quangali
(Kuangaliyeva)

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Contact

Lev Tarikov
artist management and communication

tarikovlev@gmail.com
+7 707 867 49 28

Sabina Kuangaliyeva
artist

kuangaliyevasss@gmail.com
+7 778 501 16 18

Bio

Sabina Kuangaliyeva (Quańǵalı, b. 1994, Atyrau, Kazakhstan) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is built on a critical engagement with photography as a tool of looking: decoding landscapes, reading material traces, and questioning spectatorship itself. Working across installation and artistic research, she extends this practice into other dimensions through installations, theory, and collective practices.

Kuangaliyeva studies the technogenic catastrophes of Kazakhstan, engaging with the material remnants of these events as a way to access the structure of collective trauma and the mythology that grows from it. Working with anthropogenic minerals and the intersection of personal and collective memory, she studies what persists in landscape, matter, and in the body after ecological and historical rupture.

Member of the ORTA Collective (2018–2024), she co-authored publications and co-curated projects including the inaugural Kazakhstani Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). Her research has been featured in Cosmic Bulletin 2022 by The Institute of the Cosmos (IOTC) and in The GABR Project, premiered at New York Spectacular Experiments (2024). Recent exhibitions include Everything is Lost & Therefore Safe, Atelier Cauchemar, Almaty (2025), New York Spectacular Experiments (2024), Here, There, Nowhere, Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture (2021), Limited Liability Pavilion 4.0, Dubai (2019), and Eurasian Utopia: Post Scriptum, South Korea (2018).

Selected:

Exhibitions and Performances

2025 — Everything is Lost & Therefore Safe Archival exposition at Atelier Cauchemar as part of the Cauchemar Edition Program, Almaty, Kazakhstan

2024 — New York Spectacular Experiments on the Great Atomic Bombreflector Presented by CultureHub and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, ORTA Collective, New York, USA

2022 — LAI–PI–CHU–PLEE–LAPA. Centre for the New Genius Total audio-visual installation, Kazakhstan's first national pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy

2022 — Temporary Temple of the New Genius Series of performances created in response to the installation's late arrival due to Russia's war against Ukraine, 59th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy

2021 — Here, There, Nowhere Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture, Almaty, Kazakhstan

2021 — A Zen-Extravaganza: The First Atomic Bombreflector Special theatrical and exhibition project for NONAME-2021 Decolonial Festival, Meyerhold Center, Moscow, Russia

2020 — The First Visible Phenomena Reactor Stage composition based on "Communication" by John Cage, Aspan Gallery, Almaty, Kazakhstan

2019 — The Manifestation of the First Volume of the Book of Thousand Volumes Performance, Almaty, Kazakhstan

2019 — First Contact Palace of Independence, Astana, Kazakhstan

2019 — Thinking Collections Limited Liability Pavilion 4.0, Asia Contemporary Art Week, Dubai, UAE

2018 — Focus Kazakhstan: Eurasian Utopia, Post Scriptum Suwon IPark Museum of Art, Suwon, Korea

2018 — Svetoprestavleniye Sergey Kalmykov Meyerhold Center, Moscow, Russia / ORTA Center, Almaty, Kazakhstan

2017 — Time & Astana National Museum, Astana, Kazakhstan

2017 — 52 Days Later / postExpo Astana Contemporary Art Center, Astana, Kazakhstan

2017 — Act of Creation Arman Cinema Center, Almaty, Kazakhstan

2017 — Language of Things Astana ArtFest, Astana, Kazakhstan

2016 — Post/Начало Kazakh British Technical University, Almaty, Kazakhstan

2015 — TED x Almaty / Bonjour Karakemer Kazakh National Conservatory, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Selected:

Publications and Books

2019 — The First Volume of the Novel in a Thousand Volumes Publication of texts by Sergey Kalmykov in Russian, Almaty, Kazakhstan

2021 — 7,000 Pyramids of Beuys Performative podcast for the project Beuys Radio, recorded in Almaty, Kazakhstan, for Goethe-Institut

2022 — The Second Volume of the Novel in a Thousand Volumes Publication of texts by Sergey Kalmykov in English, Venice, Italy

2022 — Sacred Expositions of the Great and Immortal LAI–PI–CHU–PLEE–LAPA Catalogue for Kazakhstan's first national pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy

Selected:

Press & Mentions

e-flux · "New York Spectacular: Experiments on the Great Atomic Bomb Reflector"

The Telegraph · "Van Gogh, Kazakhstan, and Feigned Insanity to Escape the Soviets"

Artnet News · "Kazakhstan Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2022"

Observer · "Kazakhstan Will Make Its Debut at the Upcoming Venice Biennale"

Vogue UK · "Venice Biennale 2022 Review"

Wallpaper · "Venice Biennale 2022: Best Pavilions"

ArtReview · "ORTA Collective on Representing Kazakhstan at the 59th Venice Biennale"

Apollo Magazine · "In the Studio with ORTA Collective"

House & Garden · "Why the Venice Biennale Matters"

Hyperallergic · "Nepal Debuts Inaugural Venice Pavilion"

Vlast.kz · "Manifesto of New Genius: ORTA Collective"

Horizon, Tselinny · "Digital Citizenship: Geopolitics and Identity in Post-Soviet Media Art"

Vlast.kz · "Камила Нарышева, куратор ЦСК «Целинный»"

Vlast.kz · "Act of Creation"

Vlast.kz · "Curves"

© Sabina Quangali (Kuangaliyeva)

No part may be reproduced, distributed, or used in any form without prior written consent.

On Rocks (Tas), Dreams (Tüs), and Waters (Su) is an artistic research project on technogenic catastrophes and mystic minerals, monuments of Islamic culture in Central Asia and underground caves, dragon eyes and white nights, Caspian sea and Zhaiyq river, the visible and the invisible.