From May 9 to November 22, Venice hosts La Biennale di Venezia – one of the world’s oldest and most influential platforms for contemporary art. This year, 99 national pavilions come together, each offering a unique reflection on identity, culture, and the stories nations choose to tell about themselves through art.
The 2026 edition is curated around the theme In Minor Keys, envisioned by the late curator Koyo Kouoh, whose powerful concept explores memory, identity, and voices that exist beyond dominant narratives. Few national pavilions resonate with this theme as naturally as Kazakhstan’s.
The national pavilion, Qoñyr: The Archive of Silence, brings together ten artists across six galleries of the Museo Storico Navale. For the first time in the country’s history, all participating artists were selected through an open national call, marking an important milestone in the development of Kazakhstan’s contemporary art scene.
Kazakhstan’s presence at the Biennale is an opportunity to share who we are through culture, history, and the ways our artists interpret identity in a rapidly changing world. The decision to build the pavilion through an open selection process is itself a statement about the maturity and confidence of the country’s cultural ecosystem.
The word qoñyr has no direct translation. It evokes the color of the earth, a tonal register in sound, and a state of quiet contemplation where memory is not stored in archives but continues to live through people and places. International art publications have already highlighted the Kazakhstan Pavilion as one of the most compelling contributions of this year’s Biennale.
The exhibition concludes with Qoñyr Äulie: Diving into the Quiet Depths, a digital installation by Ardak Mukanova, Head of the Art & Tech Lab at Өnergy Creative Hub, an initiative supported by NU Impact Foundation.
The work explores the stories of women who share their memories with the sacred Qoñyr Äulie cave in the Abai region — a place of pilgrimage and healing for generations. Using LiDAR scanning technology, Mukanova created a digital replica of the cave, connecting its physical space with the living voices of those who continue to carry its memory.
“This project is dedicated to women who share their stories through a sacred place. Such sites hold a special significance for the Kazakh people,” says the artist.
Founded at Nazarbayev University and developed within the NU Impact Foundation ecosystem, Өnergy Creative Hub exists to support creators whose work bridges art, science, and technology on a global scale. For us, seeing the work of one of Өnergy’s laboratory leaders presented in the final hall of the Kazakhstan Pavilion in Venice is a powerful example of what becomes possible when creativity, research, and innovation grow together.
