61. Biennale Arte – Padiglione Kazakhstan

Comunicato stampa

Qoñyr: the Archive of Silence marks Kazakhstan's third participation in the Venice Biennale and the first time a Central Asian country has selected its curator and artists through an open call.

Curated by Syrlybek Bekbota, the exhibition is presented at the Museo Storico Navale, near the Arsenale entrance. Responding to the Biennale's theme In Minor Keys, the Pavilion takes inspiration from the Kazakh concept of qoñyr, a term that literally refers to the colour brown but carries wider cosmological and sonic meaning.

The title also references the twentieth-century musical shift in Kazakhstan from predominantly major to minor tonalities, a transformation that closely reflects the country's turbulent modern history. These profound socio-cultural shocks left a deep imprint on musical expression, with the tonal shift becoming a sonic trace of historical memory. In this context, qoñyr functions as a metaphor for memory carried through sound: an "archive" that persists through body, voice and landscape rather than official record.

Occupying six interconnected rooms of the Museo Storico Navale, the Kazakhstan Pavilion unfolds as an immersive, sensorial journey featuring works by Ardak Mukanova, Gulmaral Tattibayeva and Natalya Ligay (ADYR-ASPAN), Anar Aubakir, Asel Kadyrkhanova, Smail Bayaliyev, Nurbol Nurakhmet, Mansur Smagambetov and Oralbek Kaboke. Through immersive installation and moving image, the Pavilion invites visitors to slow down and listen, positioning silence not as absence but as a space of collective resonance and resilience.