Aigerim Kapar is a founder of the Artcom Platform, a community of women researchers, artists, and cultural activists, whose mission is to practice contemporary art and engage and unite communities in a shared care for collective memory, culture, and environment for sustainable futures in Central Asia.
Aigerim will present Care for Balkhash, an open initiative that helps realize the collective care of the ecosystems of Lake Balkhash, the 14th largest lake in the world. Located in Central Kazakhstan, it is currently experiencing a social, economic, environmental, and climate crisis caused by anthropogenic impact.
The Balkhash area is surrounded by industrial and military infrastructures, including a missile testing site and a mining and metallurgy plant built during the Soviet colonial time. The artists work with local places and communities, studying history, culture, and ecology to create local knowledge that preserves Lake Balkhash's ecosystems and supports the region's sustainable future. These practices are crucial for a reinvention of the identity(ies) of nomadic communities subjected to genocide and forced sedentarization by the Soviet government in the XX century.
Aigerim will discuss strategies and practices for engaging local communities, scientists, cultural figures, local authorities, international organizations, and government representatives in the pursuit of climate and environmental justice for Lake Balkhash and local communities.
Aigerim Kapar is an interdependent curator, interdisciplinary researcher, and decolonial and environmental practitioner based in Kazakhstan.
Kapar founded Artcom Platform, a community-based contemporary art and public engagement organization in 2015. Collective memory, practices of care, nomadic culture, and environmental and climate justice, are cross-cutting in all their processes and activities. She has also been organizing Art Collider, a school where art meets science bringing communities together, since 2017. Currently, Kapar curates a hybrid reality project Steppe Space, the place for contemporary art and culture of Central Asia. In 2020 she initiated ecological movement SOS Taldykol and projects of care for lake ecosystems Care for Balkhash.
Her key previous works include Re-membering. Dialogues of Memories, an international intergenerational project in memory of survivors and victims of 20th-century political repressions in Kazakhstan (2019), and Time&Astana: After Future, an urban art research and engagement project (2017–2018).
Aigerim Kapar is a founder of the Artcom Platform, a community of women researchers, artists, and cultural activists, whose mission is to practice contemporary art and engage and unite communities in a shared care for collective memory, culture, and environment for sustainable futures in Central Asia.
Aigerim will present Care for Balkhash, an open initiative that helps realize the collective care of the ecosystems of Lake Balkhash, the 14th largest lake in the world. Located in Central Kazakhstan, it is currently experiencing a social, economic, environmental, and climate crisis caused by anthropogenic impact.
The Balkhash area is surrounded by industrial and military infrastructures, including a missile testing site and a mining and metallurgy plant built during the Soviet colonial time. The artists work with local places and communities, studying history, culture, and ecology to create local knowledge that preserves Lake Balkhash's ecosystems and supports the region's sustainable future. These practices are crucial for a reinvention of the identity(ies) of nomadic communities subjected to genocide and forced sedentarization by the Soviet government in the XX century.
Aigerim will discuss strategies and practices for engaging local communities, scientists, cultural figures, local authorities, international organizations, and government representatives in the pursuit of climate and environmental justice for Lake Balkhash and local communities.
Aigerim Kapar is an interdependent curator, interdisciplinary researcher, and decolonial and environmental practitioner based in Kazakhstan.
Kapar founded Artcom Platform, a community-based contemporary art and public engagement organization in 2015. Collective memory, practices of care, nomadic culture, and environmental and climate justice, are cross-cutting in all their processes and activities. She has also been organizing Art Collider, a school where art meets science bringing communities together, since 2017. Currently, Kapar curates a hybrid reality project Steppe Space, the place for contemporary art and culture of Central Asia. In 2020 she initiated ecological movement SOS Taldykol and projects of care for lake ecosystems Care for Balkhash.
Her key previous works include Re-membering. Dialogues of Memories, an international intergenerational project in memory of survivors and victims of 20th-century political repressions in Kazakhstan (2019), and Time&Astana: After Future, an urban art research and engagement project (2017–2018).
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