b. 1964, Tyulkubas railway station, Kazakhstan

Yerbossyn Meldibekov is a conceptually driven contemporary Central Asian artist. His practice critically deconstructs power and historical myths, particularly Soviet and post-Soviet legacies. Trained in monumental sculpture in Almaty, the collapse of the Soviet Union led him to embrace installation, performance, video and photography, transforming artistic material into a medium for ideological analysis. Using water basins as ‘local ready-mades’ and shaping them into mountains, Meldibekov creates a landscape that resonates in mountainous Central Asia and invites viewers to look and think beyond the beauty on view. In the objects, he employs his characteristic irony to expose the absurdity and repetition that underpin his ongoing archaeology of power.