A program of videos by Kazakhstani artists for Garage’s pavilion at Expo 2017.

The program Internal Memory—Not Enough Space? curated by artist Gaisha Madanova and first shown at Garage’s pavilion at EXPO 2017 includes works by Kazakhstani artists who explore the phenomena of social and cultural memory, as well as the notions of space, time, tradition, history, and contemporaneity. Since the late 1980s, Kazakhstani pioneers of contemporary art have been studying questions relating to national self-identification and the way it has been informed by the Soviet experience. Video art was among the art forms that allowed for a better articulation of the traumas associated with the era, and many works revolved around traditional aesthetics and national cultural codes. Instead of those early experiments, this program offers a focus on the video art of the digital era of fast communication, where the concept of local has become a global issue. It features nine works made since 2005 by Kazakhstani artists of different generations and based in different countries.