Assel Kenzhetayeva. Pictures at an Exhibition
Assel Kenzhetayeva is a costume director, illustrator and designer. As a person she is mischievous, bold and vivacious, and these qualities are clearly reflected in her work.
She finds that her stylistic freedom and lack of inhibition can sometimes disarm moral crusaders with their passion for imposing bans and taboos. She loves to depict female nudes, and is probably the only artist in the country who persists in swimming against the current. Central to her work is the figure of the modern Kazakh woman and she loves to quote
the Kazakh proverb: ‘A woman rocks the cradle with one hand and the universe with the other’.
Assel Kenzhetayeva was born into a famous Kazakh family. Her grandfather, Kauken Kenzhetayev, was a popular film actor, opera singer, writer, and brother of the famous Shaken Aimanov, whose name is inseparable from that of the Kazakhfilm studio. Her grandfather was multitalented and her grandmother was an opera singer. Her parents are also artistic as her father is a writer and her mother a pianist.
Assel was brought up by her grandfather, and she was Kauken-ata’s only grandchild. He adored her. He gave her his last name and a very liberal upbringing; he liked to spoil her and give her plenty of freedom. Yet in childhood Assel was not as confident in herself and her convictions as she is now. Her relatives remember her as a thoughtful, quiet and dreamy child. She always painted and loved cutting up the leather covers of her grandfather’s numerous diplomas to make clothes and furniture for the paper dolls she had drawn. She would make a table out of a box of chocolates and use a handkerchief as a tablecloth. The designer in her was evident from an early age
Even though her relatives predicted she would become a violinist because she had a perfect ear, and went so far as to enroll her in a music school, she herself chose the path of an artist. She loves rock music and can listen to opera with tears in her eyes. She manages to be both sensible and emotional. Assel cannot imagine her life without music, for her it is a drug that recharges her emotions and motivates her.
Her grandfather had a wonderful library and she grew up surrounded by books, including magnificent illustrated albums with prints ranging from the antique world to Rembrandt, Goya and Botticelli. In all art colleges, including ours, drawing nudes is a cornerstone of learning, a required subject that no painter skips. So it became quite natural for Assel to paint the bodies of beautiful women.
“To begin with” she says, “I see purity and beauty in a nude body. For me, the absence of clothes symbolises immaculacy and sincerity; a human being comes naked into this world. My work is about openness, motherhood, care, tenderness; about the relationship between a mother and baby, about family, and happiness. I have done a series about women with scars, which some might find too frank, but I speak about it openly and about the women who, though they are all different, are always beautiful. Some people see sexual aggression in my works, they find them challenging, but for me they are the manifestation of sincerity. It is also normal that the body stirs in us a wish. It is a wish to live, create, and breathe,”
Assel recalls that after her first exhibition there were many reactions, including phone calls that bordered on the threatening, but she ignored these attempts to intimidate her. She dreams about painting a collection of designer clothes in a Kazakh style and about girls sitting in a café somewhere, in Paris or London, wearing her jewellery.
After she graduated from art collage she worked as a costume designer, but she decided it wasn’t for her. She couldn’t spend enough time being creative, and when she did
there were too many limitations and she spent altogether too much time chasing funds. So she started teaching at her old art college. The democratic freedomloving teacher of drawing and painting in the Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts is loved by her students who remain friends long past graduation. They correspond and share news with their former teacher who often helps them organise their projects and introduces them to Almaty’s art world.
Assel first started exhibiting her work six years ago, which was then 40 costume sketches. Next came a ‘7/40’ vernissage for charity at Aurora Space, where Assel raised money for the treatment of a sick child. Then there was an international exhibition at Art Lane dedicated to the Great Silk Road but with a new perspective. Assel chose the theme of the slave trade. Her third solo exhibition, called ‘Woman and Tekemet’, (tekemet are traditional Kazakh carpets), was held this spring at the Art Samal Gallery. In the autumn there was another exhibition, for which she prepared a series of large canvases painted in acrylic on the theme of harvesting grapes.
This artist has so much energy, vitality and personality. “Many people say that long hours of painting drains their strength,” says Assel, “but for me it is the opposite. The more I paint the more energy I have. Afterwards I need to splash out and share it with people”.