The National Museum of Arts named after Abylkhan Kasteyev in Almaty is currently presenting Threads of Heritage, an exhibition marking the 80th anniversary of the birth of Batima Zaurbekova, one of the defining figures in Kazakhstan’s decorative arts and a pioneer of the country’s tapestry tradition.
Running until 8 November, the exhibition brings together more than 80 works from the artist’s family archive, including monumental woven compositions alongside paintings and works on paper. Together, they offer a broader view of Zaurbekova’s practice, moving beyond her reputation as a master of tapestry to reveal an artist deeply engaged with questions of memory, identity and cultural continuity.
Zaurbekova approached traditional motifs and ornament not as static elements of a historical archive, but as a living visual language. In her work, familiar cultural references become part of highly considered compositions, defined by their own rhythm, colour and formal structure. It is this movement from craft towards an individual artistic language that makes her work particularly significant within the history of Kazakh art.
The exhibition unfolds as a gradual immersion into that visual world. The opening gallery connects the presentation with the museum’s permanent collection, while its architectural forms evoke the monumental geometry of the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, an important reference in Zaurbekova’s work. Here, tapestry becomes more than a decorative medium: it takes on the qualities of shelter, home and a space in which cultural memory can be held.
The second gallery is deliberately more open, without a prescribed route through the works. Visitors are free to move between the pieces and view them from different angles, allowing individual motifs, figures and compositional rhythms to emerge gradually. It is an approach particularly suited to tapestry, a medium that demands physical attention. Unlike an image encountered on a screen, a woven work changes with proximity: texture, scale and colour reveal themselves slowly as the viewer moves through the space.
The final section turns towards women, family and continuity. Suspended above the gallery is a shanyrak — the circular crown of a traditional Kazakh yurt and a powerful symbol of home and lineage — surrounded by portraits of Kazakh women in traditional dress. Archival photographs and film footage add a more personal dimension, connecting the works with the artist’s own history and the wider cultural landscape from which they emerged.
The exhibition also moves beyond the conventional museum experience. Visitors can try their hand at a teaching loom, gaining a sense of the painstaking process behind a finished tapestry. It is an important gesture: the apparent unity of a large woven composition conceals hours of manual work, careful decisions about colour and rhythm, and an intimate understanding of the material itself.
Yet Threads of Heritage is not simply a celebration of craftsmanship. At its centre is a larger question about how tradition survives. Zaurbekova did not treat cultural heritage as something to be preserved unchanged. She translated it into a contemporary artistic vocabulary, allowing traditional imagery to acquire new forms and meanings.
Seen today, her work feels particularly relevant to the renewed interest in local artistic traditions and questions of cultural identity. The issue is no longer simply how national heritage can be preserved, but how it can continue to function within contemporary art without becoming reduced to a collection of recognisable symbols.
Zaurbekova found her answer through transformation. Ornament became composition; craft became artistic language; inherited imagery became a space for personal expression.
This is what gives Threads of Heritage its resonance beyond the occasion of an anniversary. The exhibition offers an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between memory, craftsmanship and contemporary artistic practice — and to see how a visual language rooted in tradition can continue to speak across generations.
Threads of Heritage is on view at the National Museum of Arts named after Abylkhan Kasteyev in Almaty until 8 November 2026.