Farah Piriye Coene on Curating, Borders and ‘AS ABOVE, SO BELOW’ at La Biennale di Venezia 2026

Farah Piriye Coene on Curating, Borders and ‘AS ABOVE, SO BELOW’ at La Biennale di Venezia 2026

In this episode of FORA Dialogues, we are joined by Farah Piriye Coene, London-based independent curator, art consultant, cultural producer, and co-founder of Zeitgeist19, in a conversation on curating, borders, ecology, and the role of art in shaping new forms of collective awareness. Our starting point is ‘AS ABOVE, SO BELOW’, the collateral event of the 61st International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, opening on the island of Giudecca. Developed in collaboration with One Ocean Foundation, the exhibition unfolds through sound, installation, moving image, and speculative technologies to explore the ocean not only as an environmental subject, but as a site of memory, intelligence, and interconnectedness. Farah reflects on her early curatorial experiences, including co-curating an exhibition of Tahir Salahov at Sotheby’s London, as well as on perestroika, shifting borders, alphabet changes, identity, belonging, and transformation. The conversation traces the underrepresented histories of Azerbaijani nonconformist artists, the dynamic cultural landscape of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and curating as a practice of building bridges across fragmented worlds. Further discussed is the interdisciplinary vision behind Zeitgeist19, founded together with Elizabeth Zhivkova as a platform bringing together art, science, technology, and environmental thought. Through projects such as ‘Fragile Frontiers’ and ‘AS ABOVE, SO BELOW’, Farah speaks about translating complex realities into emotional and collective experience, and considers listening as a curatorial method. The episode also moves through the participating artists and installations of the Venetian project, from Almagul Menlibayeva's cybertextile, and Suad Gara’s meditation on the disappearing Caspian Sea to bioacoustic works by Elnara Nasirli and Antoine Bertin, alongside reflections on sound, fungal networks, marine intelligence, and ecological memory. We are happy to introduce this new format in our program through a series of conversations, bringing together artists, curators, and cultural practitioners from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Given the cultural diversity and historical complexity of the region we work with, some of our conversations will take place in languages that are most natural to our speakers. At the same time, to ensure accessibility for our audience, each episode will be accompanied by subtitled video formats available on our YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/@ForaGallery]. Read more on this conversation at fora-gallery.com [https://www.fora-gallery.com/news] Check available works by the artist on artsy.net [https://www.artsy.net/partner/fora-gallery]

Almagul Menlibayeva on Art and Freedom

In our second episode, we’re joined by Berlin-based, Almaty-born multidisciplinary artist Almagul Menlibayeva in a conversation on art and freedom, from the legacies of Kazakh craft to a nuanced perspective on the region. Our starting point is Menlibayeva’s comprehensive retrospective 'I Understand Everything' at Almaty Museum of Arts, an inaugural exhibition for the museum, widely marked as Central Asia’s first private institution dedicated to modern and contemporary art on this scale. The artist reflects on what it means for a new institution to grow “from within”: through long-term relationships between a collector, local business, and the cultural field, and how this pinpoints the visibility of contemporary Kazakh art.  Menlibayeva revisits her late-Soviet underground experience with the 'Green Triangle', developing a central idea: if the past is constructed by others, society loses the power to shape its future. The episode traces how this awareness informs her practice as a method of re-seeing.  The artist highlights textile as a cultural code. Felt, ornament, and embroidery as material languages have long existed outside market and institutional frameworks, often carried through women’s knowledge. This traces into the artist's 'Cyber Textile' series and the questions of authorship raised from her work with AI. Further discussed is the women’s images across 'My Silk Road to You', and 'Red Butterfly' in relation to the “people’s” narratives that survive beyond official storylines. For the artist, the concept of Silk Road emerges not as a single route but as a multiplicity of trajectories, expanding into the twentieth century through industrialization, forced displacement, and the Soviet regime's Gulag systems.  Her retrospective lens brings us to the region’s traumatic sites of memory, and the history of Asharshylyk, addressed through Menlibayeva’s academic researches and personal narratives.  We are happy to introduce this new format in our program through a series of conversations, bringing together artists, curators, and cultural practitioners from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Given the cultural diversity and historical complexity of the region we work with, some of our conversations will take place in languages that are most natural to our speakers. At the same time, to ensure accessibility for our audience, each episode will be accompanied by subtitled video formats available on our YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/@ForaGallery]. Read more on this conversation at fora-gallery.com [https://www.fora-gallery.com/news] Check available works by the artist on artsy.net [https://www.artsy.net/partner/fora-gallery]

Saule Suleimenova in Conversation on Art, Identity & Decolonial Image

In our debut episode, we are joined by Kazakh multidisciplinary artist Saule Suleimenova for a conversation on art, identity, and the decolonial image in Central Asia. From the outset, Suleimenova has worked with archival photographs and historical materials, seeking to articulate a truthful image of Kazakhstan and its people. Reflecting on her early 'Kazakh chronicle' series, she describes turning to archival imagery as a response to the idealized aesthetics of post-Soviet socialist realism: “They are documents of their time, and they don’t lie”. A central thread of the conversation explores the challenge of representing identity without falling into either romanticization or distortion. Suleimenova speaks about her ongoing pursuit of balance between beauty and truth, emphasizing that each work or series reopens the same question: how to show things as they are. The discussion also addresses the lasting impact of colonial and Soviet legacies. Suleimenova describes a fractured sense of cultural self-worth and the disruption of historical continuity across the region, particularly in nomadic societies. Through her practice, she navigates and reconstructs these layered histories, often working through themes of trauma, memory, and collective experience. Asked about the notion of “another Kazakhness”, beyond clichés and official aesthetics, Suleimenova gestures toward “an epic sense of life” inherent to her culture. Perhaps it is “the great steppe”, she suggests, that “belongs to us” and shapes this sensibility. “When people ask me if I have a political stance on something, I say: I have feelings, I have a deep, terrible pain, and I want to convey it, to share it, because I think I am not the only one who feels this pain. I think it’s something that unites all of us”, she says. For her, everything is rooted in a fundamental emotion, a primary feeling of love. “I love our people very much - they are wonderful as they are”. Moments of trauma, she notes, reveal the character of the people with particular clarity. The Jeltoqsan protests, she recounts, exemplify this energy: Kazakh youth, largely from villages, spontaneously took to the streets in terrible cold, in frost, thousands in number. “It was epic energy. It reflects Kazakhness very well”. Her use of plastic, linked conceptually to traditional patchwork forms, becomes a way of engaging with what is discarded, overlooked, or hidden. In this context, decolonization becomes about acceptance: embracing the entirety of one’s history, including its residues. Expanding beyond national frameworks, the conversation touches on a shared cultural code across Central Asia. Reflecting on her participation in the Bukhara Biennial, Suleimenova describes the region as a space of intersections for the past and present, youth and age, language and tradition, held together by a unifying sense of connection. We are happy to introduce this new format in our program through a series of conversations, bringing together artists, curators, and cultural practitioners from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Given the cultural diversity and historical complexity of the region we work with, some of our conversations will take place in languages that are most natural to our speakers. At the same time, to ensure accessibility for our audience, each episode will be accompanied by subtitled video formats available on our YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/@ForaGallery]. Read more on this conversation at fora-gallery.com [https://www.fora-gallery.com/news] Check available works by the artist on artsy.net [https://www.artsy.net/partner/fora-gallery]