The sign ღ as a symbol of constancy

Mia Jaworska: This autumn, your solo exhibition featuring the total installation ‘ღ’ (‘ghani’) was presented at the Berlin space “Hotel Continental — Art Space in Exile”. Could you tell us about the project: how it is structured, and why you showed it in this particular place?

Anna Kin: The title of the exhibition — ღ (‘ghani’) — is a letter of the Kartvelian alphabet (native name for “Georgian” ethnicity, as well as the name of the alphabet) that became the centre of the display. This letter is characterized by its resilience despite an ever-changing context. I’ve chosen the letter “ღ” as a symbol of the exhibit as it playfully echoes the shape of a heart and places affective dialogue on language politics in transition.

“Hotel Continental — Art Space in Exile” is a platform for displaced artists in Berlin. The venue has large windows, natural daylight, columns and red-brick walls, so it has little to do with a regular concept of a white cube.

This venue resonates with the theme of displacement that I explore in my project. I drew from the distinction that Edward Said makes between exile and expatriation: exile is forced banishment, expatriation is a more voluntary emigration. In the case of artists, this boundary becomes blurred. In fact, you can stay in your home country, but you will be deprived of freedom, resources, and certain basic rights. Thus, departure turns out to be at once not entirely voluntary and not entirely forced. The exploration of this "in-between state" was one of the key points of connection with “Hotel Continental — Art Space in Exile”.

From disappearing languages to living diasporas

M. J.: How did the idea for the project come about?

A. K.: In 2023, the educational program Egin, within which ღ (‘ghani’) was produced in Almaty, organized seminars reading Spivak and Chakrabarty, Achebe, Phanon, Said, Tlostanova and other anti- and decolonial authors, whose theoretical frameworks have direct relevance to the current political realities of Central Asia and beyond. Workshops, seminars, collaborative research processes initiated and held by the Eurasian Cultural Alliance, a grassroots critical infrastructure, is as much part of the project as the installation itself.

This initiative has largely contributed to my artistic formation at that point. Upon undergoing the anticolonial shift as a young artist, I was asked to produce a special commission for the ARTBAT FEST, an outcome of the educational program. As soon as I began thinking of the artwork I would produce to deliver this large volume of new revelations, I couldn’t stop thinking about the language, especially, about the linguistic violence of the empires. “I will work with dying languages that urgently need to be archived!”, I said to the curator Vladislav Sludskiy, but as the project developed, I realised I wanted to focus on the languages of diasporas — especially languages used mainly in communities or domestic settings.

Affective archive and the corporeality of language

M. J.: You describe your language archive as affective. What does that mean for you?

A. K.: In ღ (‘ghani’) I collected video interviews in which I asked people to recite their alphabet to the camera. This activity channels a childhood memory of learning the alphabet. When a person with whom you are speaking English — a shared language — suddenly switches to their mother tongue and simply reads out the letters, you both feel childlike, and you feel connected as if through game. That is part of the reason I chose the video format: I wanted to catch the people I was collaborating with as their true and authentic selves.

Lea Feldman, a professor at the University of Chicago, project’s academic supervisor, was the one who used the term "affect" to describe my practice. This word refers to the potential of a feeling that has not yet become a specific emotion. For me, this emotional state is reminiscent of phonemes. A phoneme is not yet a word, but already an anticipation of the word — and thus of the story to follow. That is why I speak of an affective archive: it is not only about the document, but about what a person may feel when encountering this material.

M. J.: How did all of this unfold in space? Could you tell us about the installation?

The letters from different alphabets hung in the air so that a simple walk through the space would set them in motion. They began to stir, along with the shadows they cast onto the projection. This created a living dynamic: the letters wove together with the faces and bodies of the people on screen who were reciting the alphabet. One would wonder: what are these suspended letters and messed phonemes supposed to awaken?

For me, this work acts like a threshold and alludes to the possible futures of language. I do not believe in a cosmopolitanism that calls for the dissolution of tongues for the sake and comfort of one shared language. This means to erase difference, to merge every sound into one, to lean to the right-wing’s desire for control.

I am instead drawn to the autonomy of languages — to their capacity to carry memory and, thus, to generate futures. The exhibition space held this tension: as a suspension between languages, between movement and stillness, between the freedom to choose and the right to remain visible.

Linguistic trauma and rhizomatic identity

M.J.: With this performative approach you allow the research to unfold here and now. Could you tell us how your interest in language began in your artistic practice more generally?

A.K.: My formative understanding of what it means to grow up in a body that is perceived as belonging to another place, while in fact being local, serves as a foundation for my engagement with the themes of language and diaspora.

I grew up in Kazakhstan as the third generation of migrants, inheriting the blood of Volga Germans, Don Cossacks and Russians. From my childhood, I tried to mimic my surroundings, to feel ‘like one of us’, but outwardly I was read as european or slavic.

Within this context, language often functioned as a crucial medium of belonging and communication. My sense of “Kazakhness” developed during education in school, where the use of Kazakh as a language of instruction enabled access to certain groups. Building on this experience, my research engages with peoples whose languages have undergone processes of assimilation, exploring how linguistic histories shape post-imperial cultural landscapes. There is perhaps nothing quite comparable to language: it is at once an essential tool of communication and a source of kinship that contains a wide spectrum of feelings, ranging from pride to grief.

M.J.: How do you understand linguistic issues in particular, and how do you work with it in the project?

A.K.: During fieldwork and meeting with descendants of deported communities and diaspora groups I asked respondents about their personal experiences of linguistic reforms. In light of the Ukraine conflict,
I understood that I would be working with a highly sensitive topic. I did not intend to reopen the wounds of my respondents, nor was I equipped to confront them with heavy therapeutic conversations. For this reason, the interviews were structured around short, direct questions about language use at home, at work, and in public, the languages taught at school, and whether respondents or their parents adopted nicknames or second names to fit more easily into social contexts.

At the same time, these brief interviews were rarely sufficient, particularly when I spoke with elderly respondents. For them, this was not simply a matter of what is now described as “intergenerational trauma”; they were direct witnesses to the violence enacted against their cultures.

One of the episodes that had a strong impact on me was an interview with Ilmurat Mukhamedzhanovich Vafin, a representative of the Tatar diaspora in Almaty. When I interviewed him, we uncovered three levels of coping strategy behind brutal language policy: first he would move into historical reflections: "in the past, from Dunay to Irtysh everyone spoke a single Kipchak language…", then into political analysis: "the blame for linguistic displacement and ethnic persecution should lie with America", and then into religious fatalism: "everything is in God’s hands".

He then showed me the diaspora centre: in one hall there were boards with the Tatar alphabet in Cyrillic. Wherever the necessary characters were missing, red pens in hand, they simply added strokes and hooks, crossed extra things out and voilà — the corrected alphabets in golden frames now adorned the walls of the diaspora centre.

For Tatars, the most authentic form of the Tatar language is the language of the poet Gabdulla Tukay — a symbol of Tatar literature, as Rudaki for Persians, and Cholpon for Uzbeks. What is significant here is the enduring faith of diasporas in their language and culture as foundations of the future. Through such stories, I understood that an important amount of knowledge and many of the efforts to preserve the language is transmitted within families or fairly closed communities. The ღ (‘ghani’) project is, to a great extent, about this invisible yet very alive part.

It seems important to me that language is something through which it is very easy to inflict violence. And this violence is very rarely acknowledged.

If we turn to Cathy Caruth, she writes about two types of trauma. There is Trauma with a capital T — historical events that a person or a society is at some point able to live through and integrate into a narrative. And there is trauma with a lower-case t — the kind that a person is not able to comprehend. Because of this, a rupture occurs.

Linguistic trauma is very often precisely of this kind — with a small t. It is not articulated; it simply lives inside us. And then it manifests itself, for example, as hatred towards other ethnicities. Art and culture, in turn, activate the healing by bringing different views into a single dialogue and calling for understanding.

For the second iteration of ღ (‘ghani’) in Berlin, I wanted to create a space in which a person could at least partially address collective healing. During the show’s display at Hotel Continental — Art Space in Exile in September 2025, we included a public program. Through socially engaged practices developed with the invited Ukrainian artist and independent curator Nikolay Karabinovich and Berlin-based sound artist and lecturer from the Berlin University of the Arts, Banu Çiçek Tülü, the project gained significant depth. In her practice, Dr. Tülü explores sound as a form of language beyond script. In dialogue with ღ (‘ghani’), she suggested listening as a collective practice capable of dealing with the difficult heritage and finding an outlet for this suppressed energy.

A meditative workshop proposed by Karabinovich explored the “language of systems” — bureaucracy and ideology. Titled Field of the Cloth of Gold: L — Labubu, C — Curtis Yarvin, and a Hidden Cache in the Job Centre, the activation employed collage and nonlinear montage techniques to suggest ways of liberating language from structures of oppression.

The public program further expanded the project's engagement with the transitions currently shaping different postcolonial landscapes.

M.J.: As far as choice and participation are concerned, the project also includes an important participatory element — the microphone. Could you tell me more about it?

A.K.: Yes, in the new iteration of the project in Berlin we added a microphone. It was the idea of the team working on site, as they were assembling in the exhibition.

They called me and said: “We feel there should be a microphone here so that people can also read their alphabets.” I really liked this idea because it gave room to more horizontality and encouraged a shared process. This way, an immersive installation creates a dialogue, leaving the statement open and listening to its audience.

The microphone became an open invitation: anyone who felt that their alphabet deserved to be part of this exhibition could simply come and read it aloud. And I think it is wonderful to allow someone to participate not only as a viewer, but also as a co-author. In addition, I like the metaphor itself: you literally bring your body in contact with language, walk through this forest of letters, brush against them as you move, and speak your own language. It is a very bodily way of living through the subject.

M.J.: The strength of your artistic practice emerges from its contradictions and its unfinished character — from its openness and its invitation to togetherness. In your texts you use the term rhizomatic identity. What do you mean by this, especially in relation to language?

A.K.: It is important for me to emphasise that linguistic violence is not specific to a particular country. It is a common instrument used by almost all imperial regimes.

The first thing a conqueror does is to change the exhibits of the territory’s local history museum. It is through culture, heritage and language that it is easier to influence the cultural and political agency of an ethnic group.

And this outcome is shared by many: Meskhetian Turks, Mari people, Lezgins, Nogais, Finno-Ugrian peoples, Berbers in North Africa and many others. It is a trans-imperial reality: everyone has their own history, but the structure of imperial violence is often similar.

I imagine this process of solidarity as a mycelium: spores are located in different places but can nonetheless communicate, sense changes and create connections. Just as in an ecosystem: one pest begins to eat a flower, and this flower releases a toxin not only here but also in another part of the forest in order to protect itself from the approaching threat.

Rhizomatic identity is about the transmission of these signals when harmful events occurring in different places and at different times begin to respond to one another. And language, in this case, is the conduit through which these resonances pass.

The context of artistic practice, community and future trajectories

M.J.: How do you define your artistic practice more broadly, and what inspires you at the moment?

A.K.: I have always been drawn to exploring my identity, but only as a part of a given political and ecological environment. Each private story crosses these sections, representing the scope of larger issues and collective triggers. This, in my opinion, is what makes art speak to people.

I try to approach the context in which I live: not only the theme language, but also folklore, mythology and magical thinking. To me, the transmission of this knowledge as well as its interpretation, is what keeps cultures alive.

The next project I am considering is linked to the river. Central Asia is currently experiencing a serious water crisis. For decades, water resources have been exploited for the production of cotton, silk, and rice, as well as for the extraction of non-ferrous metals — processes that are directly connected to Soviet policies and to contemporary capitalist practices of extractivism. The waters of the Aral Sea, the Fergana Canal, Lake Balkhash, the Syr Darya, and the Ili River — which sustain life or have previously been sacrificed to production and industry — are all affected.

However, the river used to be a meeting place for different diasporas: Volga Germans, Uyghurs, Tatars, Koreans, and others. People celebrated holidays there, marked the birth of children, and shared their losses with the water. For my family the image of the river is very important. On my father’s side, my forebears were fishermen and settled near water. After the deportations, the family ended up in Kazakhstan near the Ili River, which has become significantly shallower over the past fifty years.

In this new project, I want to explore the river as a shared site of encounter among displaced communities: Uyghur, Tatar, Korean, Volga German. Through diving into folklore, interviews with diaspora and archives, it will investigate ideologies beyond capitalism and the anthropocene. Instead, it will spotlight myths, shamanistic rituals as well as pagan traditions, to display a bigger picture and explore the idea of agency of nature. By foregrounding local cosmologies, the film will challenge extractive narratives that dismiss indigenous ways of relating to land and water from Soviet hydro-politics to capitalist extraction.

M.J.: In the ღ (‘ghani’) project one can sense the importance of togetherness in the process of working on the project, and this is expressed not only in the participatory character of the format. Could you tell us a little more about the team?

A.K.: The curator of the Berlin exhibition is Zuleykha Ibad. We met at the summer school ‘Language in political context’, organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in Valmiera. I gave a talk there, speaking about our art scene and my practice; Zuleykha was a participant. We quickly found a common language because we come from similar contexts, we grew up with the same pop music, we share folklore characters and have a similar understanding of how the world is arranged in (post)colonies. A year after this meeting, we were making this exhibition together in Berlin.

The exhibition was produced by Lev Tarikov. We also met through this project, initially online. He wrote to me: “I liked your project. May I quote it in my thesis?” Of course, I agreed. It was very gratifying to realise that the project had reached people I did not personally know.

Later we met in Berlin, and after some time I invited him to work with me as producer. It is always more interesting to think and to build strategies together.

My sister, Liza Kin, is also an important person in this story. She is an artist. I think that my entire practice has grown out of the fact that she was influencing me towards contemporary arts and culture.

M.J.: How do you see the future of ღ (‘ghani’)? Is it already a completed project, or do you plan to develop it further?

A.K.: Overall, it seems to me that the project still has good potential. I would very much like to show it once again in Kazakhstan. Not many people have seen it there, and there is interest. And it is important for me to present it on various international stages — in places where there are diasporas with similar experiences and a sensitivity to the question of language. At the moment, together with the Widok, open-access academic journal and editor Katsiaryna Silvanovich, we are working on publication: “Artistic Research as an Advanced Practice”.