On the evening of May 5, 2026, on the eve of the opening of Kazakhstan’s third national pavilion at the Venice Biennale and on the birthday of artist Asel Kadyrkhanova, one of the pavilion’s participants, it became known that her work Machine (2013), a piece dedicated to the Red Terror, had been censored. The artist herself announced this on social media — this is how I first learned of what had happened.

 

At the official opening of the pavilion on the morning of May 6, the incident was not addressed in any way. The exhibition was presented as a finished whole, even though one of its works had already been removed. Only after I asked other participants in the pavilion did it become clear that Machine was no longer part of the exhibition, and that the space where it had been installed was covered with a black curtain. This silence left a profound impression on me: not only because a specific work had been removed, but because the act of removal itself seemed to have been pushed outside the realm of public discussion. In Pierre Nora’s terms, one might speak here of a conflict between memory and its institutional fixation: what was meant to function as a site of memory instead became a space of erasure and silence.

 

Why did this happen?

The most obvious question concerns the reason for the dismantling of Machine itself. According to the information available, the work had been approved both by the expert committee that reviewed the curatorial proposal and by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Moreover, this was not a new work: it had already been exhibited in Kazakhstan, including as part of the exhibition 1937. Territory of Memory. Zhoktau at the Kasteev Museum in 2013, and later abroad, including as part of Focus Kazakhstan in London in 2018. In other words, the work already existed within an institutionally recognized field and did not suddenly appear as an “unforeseen” gesture.

 

For that very reason, its removal cannot be understood as a neutral technical decision. Rather, it points to a shift in the regime governing what may be said about Stalinist repression and the Red Terror. Here, Jan Assmann’s perspective is especially relevant: cultural memory does not merely preserve the past, but also governs its selection, forgetting, and suppression through mechanisms of manipulation, censorship, and substitution. In other words, the question is not only why this particular work was removed, but also which version of the past is now considered acceptable for public representation.

 

If the state previously supported the commemoration of the victims of repression as part of a national narrative, then the present situation appears as a symptom of a shift. Kazakhstan under Nazarbayev could, at least declaratively, incorporate repression and famine into its public politics of memory; the current configuration, by contrast, seems to show greater caution toward artistic forms that make these themes too explicit. In this sense, the censorship of Machine becomes not only an artistic event, but also a memorial one: it reveals which images of the past are permitted and which are to be displaced.

 

What does it mean to curate a pavilion?

The next question concerns the curatorial role itself within a national pavilion. The Venice Biennale is not simply an exhibition venue; it is a space of national representation in which the artistic project inevitably operates at the intersection of local and international contexts. According to the Biennale’s official procedures, the curator of a national participation is responsible not only for the artistic direction of the project, but also for its realization, materials, texts, brochures, and the pavilion’s overall public presentation. This means that the curator is not only the author of a concept, but also a figure of institutional responsibility.

 

It is precisely for this reason that the removal of one of the works without public explanation calls into question not only a specific decision, but the very logic of curating. A national pavilion presumes a curator capable of working with the conflicts that arise between artists, institutions, and state frameworks. If conflict is not addressed but concealed, then the curatorial function is reduced to scenography and organizational management. In that case, what is at stake is no longer curatorial strategy, but the failure of a mediating role.

 

Particularly problematic in this context is the combination of curator and artist within a single project. When the project’s curator presents their own video installation in the pavilion, while one of the participating artists’ works is removed, questions arise regarding the distribution of attention, responsibility, and symbolic capital. This does not necessarily imply bad faith, but it certainly demands far stricter reflection. In terms of institutional critique, such a configuration makes visible — and sharpens — questions about who is granted the right to speak in the name of the country, and who defines the boundaries of what may be said within a national statement.

 

What about accountability?

Equally important is the question of funding. The pavilion was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Samruk Kazyna, meaning that it was realized with public funds. This automatically makes it an object of public accountability. If one of the works was removed, if the exhibition was incomplete, and if even basic handouts were absent at the opening, then the issue is not only artistic but also administrative: how were resources allocated, and who is responsible for the final form of the project?

 

Here it is useful to recall Nora’s insight that memory becomes especially vulnerable precisely when it must be artificially sustained through archives, anniversaries, rituals, and institutional gestures. The national pavilion is, in this sense, such an artificially assembled memorial object. But if it is simultaneously financed by the state and deprived of one of its key works without public comment, then it ceases to function as a space of memory and becomes a space of administrative opacity. The question of the budget is therefore not secondary: it concerns the ways in which the state materializes, filters, and controls its public memory.

 

Why does this divide the field?

The response to what happened was, unsurprisingly, polarized. Some in the art community supported Asel Kadyrkhanova, while others defended the organizers, curators, and the other participants in the project. But this division, in my view, is not simply a clash of opinions. It reveals how fragile the field of artistic solidarity remains when it lacks transparent information and when institutions prefer silence to public explanation.

 

This is precisely where the logic of cultural memory becomes especially visible: if the public archive is incomplete, if the facts are not articulated, if responsibility is diffused, then the space of discussion is quickly filled with affective loyalties, suspicion, and moral polarization. In the end, the argument is no longer about censorship as such, but about who belongs to “us” and who belongs to “them,” who has the right to speak, and who is expected to remain silent. This dynamic is consistent with what Assmann describes as the suppression and substitution of memory: the removal of one work triggers a broader process of editing public history.

 

For me, the central question is not only why Machine was removed, but also why this removal was possible without an immediate public explanation. It is in that silence that the most symptomatic gesture lies. It shows that in a national pavilion formally dedicated to artistic expression, memory can be not represented, but canceled.