Opening. From Soviet cinema to Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture by Asif Khan

Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture by Asif Khan. Photograph by Laurian Ghinitoiu.

History and Transformation
The cinema was constructed in 1964 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Soviet “Tselina” (Virgin Lands) agricultural campaign — a programme that permanently altered the rights and relationships of Kazakhs with their sacred steppe through mass migration and colonisation. Its name, Tselinny, was overtly political, celebrating the conquest of the steppe and projecting Soviet ideology into the heart of Almaty.

The building was also deliberately positioned to conceal the St. Nicholas Cathedral from the city. One imperial layer was thus used to obscure another: Soviet modernity suppressing religious presence. This act is emblematic of Almaty’s complex history. Today the city is celebrated for its leafy boulevards and mountain views, yet beneath its surface lie archaeological remains pointing to more than a thousand years of habitation, trade, and cultural exchange.

At its core, the cinema housed an 18-metre-high auditorium — the largest in the C.I.S. region — designed to project the Soviet ultra-wide panoramic film format. Yet over its 61 years, the building’s identity was steadily eroded. It struggled into the 1980s, was subdivided into a multiplex, added to with nightclubs and lounge bars, then a pizza restaurant, a photo studio, and a furniture showroom in the foyer, before collapsing into commercial failure.

In late 2017, the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture, an unprecedented international platform for Kazakh and Central Asian art and artists, took stewardship of the building. Over nearly eight years of discussion, public consultation, and design, the Tselinny Center - under the direction of Jamilya Nurkalieva and artistic director Alima Kairat - sustained its artistic programme, delivering more than 500 public events across Almaty as well as 12 publications, while work steadily progressed on the transformation of what was to be its permanent home.

“Tselinny is an example of a rare moment when the project was conceived at the same time as the decision was made to transform the space; and during these past years we have developed our own institutional voice while simultaneously dealing with the creation (reconstruction) of the building. These two rivers of flow and thought, about which aspect of the project holds influence, has culminated in a wonderful solution where our interdisciplinary programme reveals the best of Asif Khan's spatial imagination.”

Jamilya Nurkalieva, director of Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture.

Architecture and Seismic Reconstruction
The project removed intrusive reconstructions, including additional columns and a full mezzanine inserted into the foyer during the early 2000s. These interventions destroyed large sections of the original monumental sgrafitto created in 1964 by Soviet artist Evgeny Sidorkin (1930-1982). For years the work was thought lost; a partial replica for the exterior was even commissioned by Sidorkin’s son in the early 2000s.

A new “cloudscape” spans the north and south façades: a non-figurative embossed language of symbols developed from “found forms within the Sidorkin replica.” This abstract visual script signifies lost memory and detachment from the past — an unknown but familiar language to local people, akin to Kazakh ornament, a distant memory which might one day be known again. These forms re-appear in the building as the shape of windows, in its lighting and as motifs in staircases. The wayfinding system, also developed by Khan, extends this idea, using “eroded” pictograms and numbers that visually connect to the bronze-age Tanbaly petroglyphs, which are deeply ingrained in the local consciousness.

Materials and New Thresholds
The rear auditorium and front block retain exposed concrete, preserving their monumental qualities. 

As part of the reconstruction, the floors of the entire ground level were lowered to remove all internal level changes. The four steps at the main entrance were eliminated, establishing a single continuous ground plane that flows outwards in all directions into the surrounding landscape. This surface forms a literal ground for public life and a metaphorical steppe, linking the building to Kazakhstan’s vast natural horizons.

The landscape and interior finishes continue this geological language: rounded river stones unearthed during excavation and gathered from the Almaty region are used in the landscaping; fossil-rich limestone from the ancient seabed in the Mangystau region of Kazakhstan forms a reception desk; and earth-toned pigmented concrete is laid throughout the foyer.

The cloud-like curving entrance threshold softens the box-like concrete frame, bringing life and femininity into its monumental geometry, while also recalling the tradition of brise-soleil screens common in Almaty.

Inside, the reconstructed foyer Orta 1 connects to the new café JER (Earth), designed by local studio NAAW, the white box Capsule gallery, the transformable Orta 2 gallery, and the vast Orta 3 auditorium. A new basement beneath the building houses a cloakroom, WCs, a quiet room for prayer and neurodiverse visitors to the building, back-of-house areas, and kitchens.

The next phases of the project will incorporate improvements to neighbouring Baitursynov Park and the creation of an inclusive pedestrian public territory between the adjacent church, the park and Tselinny, finally re-opening barriers which have been in place for 61 years.

A New Ground for Artists
With its layered symbolism — from the rediscovered Sidorkin mural to the cloud of Tengri brought to earth — together with structural renewal and openness to the public, the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture is both a cultural gift and a historical reckoning: a bridge between earth and sky, past erasures and future imagination.