The Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture will open Himoya: Matrilineal Energies, Oracular Kin on 15 October 2026. This major international exhibition is curated by Natasha Ginwala and runs until 4 April 2027.
The show brings together 20 artists from Central Asia and around the world. Many are presenting newly commissioned projects, alongside site-responsive and existing works. Together, they explore how art can protect, heal and remember in a time of upheaval.
What Does Himoya Mean?
Across several linguistic traditions, the word himoya carries the sense of protection, shelter and guardianship. It also speaks to the defence of those who are vulnerable. The exhibition reads this idea in a fresh way. It turns to oracular knowledge systems and ancestral intelligence, treating them as living forces in today’s art and culture rather than relics of the past.
Himoya traces paths where artists renew their ties with matrilineal energies, anti-imperial cosmologies and care for the environment. At the same time, it confronts difficult histories: colonial tensions, ideological erasure and civic repression. These pressures have led to deep losses across the region. Languages, rituals and local ways of life have disappeared or been pushed to the margins. The exhibition asks how artists can respond to this loss, and how ancestral knowledge might help communities hold on to what remains.
Tengri, Sufi and Shamanic Traditions Shape the Show
The artists in Himoya centre femme and queer kinships in their work. They draw on Sufi and Zoroastrian practices, shamanic traditions and ecological stewardship. Many also imagine shared futures free from imperial control. The exhibition takes inspiration from Tengri living traditions and ancient Turkic cosmologies. These belief systems, long rooted in the steppe, sit alongside spiritual practices from other connected regions.
From this foundation, Himoya asks a timely question: can art act as an oracle and a shield? The show places this question against a backdrop of patriarchal violence and political volatility. It also responds to ecological ruin and renewed struggles over memory and belonging. The exhibition invites visitors to consider how older forms of wisdom might guide responses to present-day crises across Central Asia and beyond.
Alima Kairat, artistic director at Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture, said: “For Tselinny, Himoya is the culmination of a conversation that began in 2021—a slow unfolding of questions around matrilineal memory, ritual, protection, and the inherited languages of shame and care.” She added that these themes are “deeply rooted in the lived realities of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, where ancestral knowledge continues to shape the present and offers new ways of imagining the future.”
The remarks underline the exhibition’s local roots. While the artist list is international, the questions at its heart come from the region itself. They reflect how families, rituals and inherited beliefs still shape daily life across Kazakhstan and its neighbours.
What to expect
Himoya spans a wide range of media. Visitors will encounter sculpture, moving image, installation, painting, textile, performance and sound. Through these forms, the artists address shame, migration, historical trauma, social change and collective survival. They propose new ways of relating to one another, grounded in reciprocity, devotional practice, reparative justice and matriarchal memory.
The exhibition design is by Diogo Passarinho Studio, led by Diogo Passarinho and Gonçalo Reynolds. Their approach responds directly to the building’s past as a Soviet-period cinema. The space is reimagined as a place of non-imperial projection, shared living and open-ended dreaming. The designers add varied materials that create a shifting landscape and link the exhibition’s ‘Orta’, or sites, to one another. Within this ‘cloud-like’ architecture, Himoya presents stories and shared, embodied knowledge.
Meet the 20 Artists of Himoya
The exhibition brings together artists rooted in Kazakhstan and Central Asia alongside international names working across connected geographies.
The participating artists are: Ahmed Umar, Almagul Menlibayeva, Ana María Millán, Areez Katki, Aziza Kadyri, Citra Sasmita, Guzel Zakir, Haegue Yang, Hoa Dung Clerget, Jazgul Madazimova, Nara Beibit, NAOMI, Oyjon Khayrullayeva, Radina Yasueva, Rajni Perera, Rithika Pandey, Thania Petersen, Umida Akhmedova, Yelaman Muqtarkhan and Zilola Saidova.
All 20 are actively engaged with the themes at the heart of the show. Together, they form a constellation of artistic positions that connect local histories with global conversations on protection, memory and belonging.
About Curator Natasha Ginwala
Natasha Ginwala is a curator, researcher and writer with deep ties to Tselinny. She has sat on the centre’s Advisory Board since 2022. She is artistic director of Colomboscope in Sri Lanka. She is also curator of Current V: Ancestral Ocean at TBA21–Academy (2026–28). Her curatorial record includes Sharjah Biennial 16 (2025), Contour Biennale 8, documenta 14 (2017), the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2014) and the Taipei Biennale 2012. Since 2011, she has led several international exhibitions, forums and educational programmes.
About Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture
The centre was founded by Kazakh entrepreneur and philanthropist Kairat Boranbayev as the country’s first private cultural institution. It has operated since 2018. In 2025, Tselinny opened at its permanent venue, a former cinema dating from 1964. The reconstruction was carried out under the direction of architect and artist Asif Khan. The exhibition is accompanied by embodied research, workshops and a learning programme. Visitors can see it Tuesday to Sunday, from 11am to 7pm, over nearly six months.
Cover image: Oyjon Khayrullaeva, Bahamut” from “Aja’ib al-makhlugat (Wonders of creation), written by the 13th-century scholar Zakariya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini. Digital collage on textile. Courtesy of the artist and Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture.
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
