The exhibition traces the intertwined histories of nuclear infrastructures, colonialism and resistance, beginning in the Northern Kazakh steppe around Semey, which the Soviet Union used for their nuclear programme between 1948 and 1991, causing long-lasting effects of pollution and radiation of water, land, humans and non-human animals.

Behind the geopolitical, financial and militarised structures of the atom, lie the lifeworlds of those directly affected by the cycle of mining uranium to detonating and testing nuclear weapons, turning bodies and lands into storage sites of nuclear waste. Compounded by radiation’s famed invisibility, the carefully constructed invisibility of nuclear infrastructures serves as a double erasure, complicating solidarity and cooperation between affected people and territories.

The historical Nevada-Semey anti-nuclear movement sought to undo precisely this obscuring by uniting affected communities from Kazakhstan and the United States, successfully ending Soviet nuclear testing in 1989. In a particularly moving gesture, this anti-nuclear uprising saw hundreds of people walking together between two pillars of fire, an ancient purification ritual, harnessed to repair radiation’s damage to the steppe.

The exhibition at Framer Framed seeks to renew this transnational intention of anti-nuclear movements, by connecting irradiated lifeworlds through new and existing poetic, visual, and sonic art, featuring works by artists including buulbuul, Demian DinéYazhi’, Inas Halabi, Äsel Kadyrkhanova, Dilyara Kaipova, Almagul Menlibayeva, Kamila Narysheva & Vicky Clarke, Roger Peet, and Emilija Škarnulytė, as well as research presentations by Kamila Smagulova (Leiden University) and the International Institute of Social History (IISG) – testifying to the temporalities and spatialities of nuclear colonialism across various geographies.

The exhibition features two new works by buulbuul and Äsel Kadyrkhanova, co-commissioned by Framer Framed and Sonic Acts. buulbuul’s project The Burial of a Brown Goose is both an installation and performance, tracing lifelines from regions in Kazakhstan scarred by nuclear testing and radiation, focusing on human and more-than-human interaction in the midst of genocide and colonial violence. Äsel Kadyrkhanova’s Nükte consists of a video-animation and large-scale drawing installation that reflects on the incognisability of landscape, specifically the landscape marked by the presence of radiation.

Register here and join the opening on 13 February