Andakulova Gallery

Exhibo editorial

Central Asia has five countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan — and virtually no gallery representation in the global art market. Natalya Andakulova opened her gallery in DIFC in 2012 with a single proposition: change that. Twelve years later she is still the only gallery in Dubai dedicated exclusively to the art of the region, still travelling back to Tashkent and Almaty to find artists that the market hasn't found yet, still running drawing workshops and lectures on Islamic art alongside the exhibition programme as a way of building an audience rather than waiting for one to arrive. The artists she has brought to DIFC — Javlon Umarbekov, Timur D'Vatz, Timur Akhmedov, Alfiz Sabirov — carry traditions that reach back through Soviet-era art education and further into Islamic ornamental culture, Silk Road iconography, steppe mythology. In Dubai, a city where almost everyone arrives from somewhere else and almost no gallery asks where that somewhere is, Andakulova has spent over a decade making the answer visible. The gallery has participated in Astana Art Fair and shown outside DIFC in collaboration with hotels and institutions across the city. The research is continuous. The commitment is not ambiguous.