Aissulu Kadyrzhanova | Symbiotic Drift
Aissulu Kadyrzhanova’s visual language is rooted in the vast expanses of the Kazakh steppe and shaped by the experience of long journeys between her hometown, Almaty, and Moscow, where she studied painting. Landscapes nearly devoid of human presence yet charged with metaphysical energy continue to inform her vision. In her work, nature appears as a living consciousness: trees, water, and celestial bodies recur as motifs that bridge the visible and the invisible.
Drawing on Central Asian cosmologies, Kadyrzhanova approaches the world as a shared fabric in which human and nonhuman life coexist without clear boundaries. Through painting, video, and sculpture, she engages with this web of relationships and with what Donna Haraway calls “critters,” the many beings that constitute our environment.
Based in Philadelphia, she received her BFA in Painting from the Surikov Moscow State Fine Arts Institute and holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at PII Gallery (Philadelphia, 2021, 2025), Zephirin Giannetta Gallery (Ardmore, 2024), and NoBa Art Space (Bala Cynwyd, 2018), as well as in international group exhibitions in Kazakhstan and Russia. She was an artist-in-residence at the Asian Arts Initiative’s Pearl Street Residency in Philadelphia (2016–2017).
instagram: @aissulu_kadyrzhan
Courtesy of the artist
@ 2025 Symbiotic Drift. All Rights Reserved.