AIKA AKHMETOVA

Artist Statement

When I make my work I often start with a tradition, a tale or an established conservative way of doing “something,” anything. My references often are culturally specific to Kazakhstan and the traditions and rituals of my tribe, Jalayir. I study the history of traditions and norms and reenact them in “the wrong way,” often upsetting the conservative side of the ritual. I like to make work that disrupts the normal from the inside out by reenacting the violence that norms inflict on me back onto the norms themselves. I think a lot about gender and queerness, and what it means for me to be simultaneously non-binary, queer, and Kazakh. What it means to exist in a space where you are either invisible and mute, or highly visible, loud, and a sudden victim of a violent outburst of “the normal.”  

Recently someone described my work as “a pink ribbon around a ticking time bomb,” which in a way sums up my intent with the work. I use found objects to make sculptures, videos, performances that look and feel familiar and real, but will poison the ordinary. I am interested in the overlap of rituals and how “common knowledge” can allow the viewer to see themselves in the work, either literally by having a mirror-like surface in the sculpture, or figuratively by implicating the viewer in my body while performing. 

Often, I find pleasure in the violence of my work. If it’s violence that I inflict on my own body, I find it liberating; if it’s violence towards an object, it’s a channel for a peaceful outburst. In a lot of my work, I like to leave traces of being in the work or using the object, making almost all of my still sculptural pieces performative through a trace. 

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