Born in Almaty, Kazakhstan and working across drawing, embroidery, photography, installation, moving image and animation, Asel Kadyrkhanova explores the signs and sites of unrecognized trauma and missing cultural memory in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. She investigates the impact on the ‘post-generation’ of missing narratives and images in post-totalitarian societies of events such as the Stalin-inflicted famines. Having studied fine art in Kazakhstan and Britain, she is currently the first postdoctoral artist in residence at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Her choice of media and process explores embodiment, haptic visuality, place and language (especially working visually with the Kazakh, Arabic, Russian and European alphabets). Many of her works offer strong visual metaphors to address lasting Soviet and colonial legacies while also seeking to make visible aspects of pre-Soviet Kazakh society, language and culture. Her work has been exhibited in Hong Kong, Moscow, Baku, Istanbul, Almaty, London, Leeds, Wiesbaden and she was included in Documenta 15 (2022).