Aspan Gallery is a leading contemporary art gallery based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The gallery’s mission is to represent and support multidisciplinary work by Central Asian artists through exhibitions, publications, residencies and educational programs. In 2015 the gallery initiated a series of mid-career retrospectives of Central Asian contemporary artists, held jointly with the Kasteev Museum, Almaty. These are the first museum shows in Central Asia of artists who, although internationally acclaimed, are little known in their home countries. The first exhibition of Meldibekov’s work ‘Eternal Return’ curated by Viktor Misiano was named by the press as the most significant cultural event in Kazakhstan for the last several years. The second exhibition of Vorobyevs’ work ‘The Artist Is Asleep’ attracted even more critical and public attention and was reviewed in Frieze and Art Asia Pacific magazines. Subsequently Vorobyevs’ eponymous installation was exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale and bought by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Apart from exhibitions of Central Asian artists the gallery also stages exhibition-dialogues of a Central Asian and an international non-Western artist. The first edition was dedicated to Kazakhstani Said Atabekov and Malian Abdoulaye Konate. The second show united Kazakhstani Yerbossyn Meldibekov and Slovenian Vadim Fishkin. Spring 2019 exhibition brought together young artists – a prominent duo of Kazakhstani artists Anvar Musrepov and Nazira Karimova together with world famous Tabita Rezaire from the French Guiana.