A touching, warm exhibition has opened at the Space 1618 gallery in Staromonetny Lane: Saule Madiyeva presents a series of conceptual works in felt

A touching, warm exhibition has opened at the Space 1618 gallery in Staromonetny Lane: Saule Madiyeva presents a series of conceptual works in felt. On the one hand, the artist turns to traditional techniques and uses the favourite material of the nomadic world; on the other, she attempts a personal, emotional narrative within the space of contemporary art.

For Saule, working with this living medium, unusual outside the sphere of decorative and applied art, is a way of reflecting on her bond with the past and her roots and of expressing the permanence of being: ever new forms, objects and ideas arise from age-old matter, appearing and vanishing, like the bodily forms in Madiyeva's paintings, simply dissolving into a viscous, saturated and misty landscape. It is a very interesting metaphor for the legendary land of plenty and serenity, Zheruyik, where a starling will build its nest on the back of a ram, fields of barley ripen without watering or hoe, and the earth resembles thick milk.

The artist associates felt with inner strength, and with the series on show she marks important triumphs over adversity in her own life