Inga Lāce, “Qonaqtar: Pathways from the Collection of the Almaty Museum of Arts,” in Qonaqtar (Almaty Museum of Arts, 2025), 16.
For a summary of the events, see Diana Kudaibergen, What Does it Mean to be Kazakhstani: Power, Identity and Nation-Building (London: Hurst, 2025), 143–61.
For the architectural and town-planning context of Tselinny see, Anna Bronovitskaya et al., Alma-Ata: Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Modernizma 1955–1991 (Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture ; Garage Museum, 2018), 44-45.
Zhanna Mazhitova et al., “Environmental Consequences of Khrushchev’s Virgin Land Campaign in Kazakhstan (1950s–1960s),” E3S Web of Conferences 258 (2021).
See Alex Fisher, “Seeing through the sgraffito: Tselinny’s adaptive reuse,” East East, 2024, ➝.
See “From Caligula to Selling Sofas: How Tselinny Survived the 1990s and 2000s,” Vlast, December 13, 2024, ➝.
Neither restaurant—nor Kairat’s other McDonald’s restaurants in Kazakhstan and Russia, where he also owned a chunk of the franchise—have had a smooth ride. McDonald’s withdrew from Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kazakhstan’s McDonald’s restaurants received their meat from a distribution centre in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg, which could therefore no longer handle patties under the American brand. In consequence, Kairat’s Almaty McDonald’s restaurants have had to rebrand, and currently operate under the name “I’m.” See Maria Gorbokonenko, “Istoria o tom, ka na meste dvuh kinoteatrov v Almaty poyavilsya MacDonald’s,” Orda, January 7, 2023, ➝.
“Documentation: Imagination of Central Asia on the Map of Contemporary Art,” an archival exhibition devoted to the artworlds of Central Asia in the 1990s, curated by Bishkek-based Asel Rashidova, is on display in Tselinny until April 14, 2026.
Markus Lähteenmäki, From Sky to Earth: Tselinny by Asif Khan and How it is Made (Almaty: Tselinny CCC, 2025), 1.
Lähteenmäki, From Sky to Earth, 2.
Diana Kudaibergen, Barsakelmes, ed. Anuar Duisenbinov (Tselinny CCC, 2025). Text also available online: ➝.
As this text goes to press, signs are afoot that Kazakhstan’s government, which so far has nimbly asserted (relative) autonomy, is becoming vulnerable (or receptive) to Russian pressure to toe the line. Several Russian exiles critical of the regime—and one Ukrainian, forced to accept Russian citizenship in 2014 following the occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula—have been deported to Russia in recent months, or are currently facing extradition proceedings. See, “Russians Fleeing Repressions and Mobilization Once Found Refuge in Kazakhstan. Now, Kazakh Authorities Are Helping Moscow Hunt Them Down,” Meduza, February 19, 2026, ➝.
