Aigerim Arginbayeva is a Kazakh-born artist based in London. Working between painting and drawing, she explores memory, emotion, and identity.
After studying Graphic Design and Illustration at Central Saint Martins and working as an illustrator (Lesidris), she turned to painting following motherhood - a shift that brought a more physical, intuitive approach. She recently completed a Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art.
In my practice, I keep returning to Kazakh folklore not because I have answers, but because I have questions I can’t put down. Who am I? What have I inherited? How much of me is left once you remove the cultural codes: the stories, the sayings, the symbols, the roles assigned before I could choose?
I toy with inheritance. I take what has been handed down: sacred figures , heroic archetypes, traditional ornaments, folk sayings, and reimagine them through humor, symbolism and invented narrative. There is always a question in my mind : can I do this? Am I allowed?
That tension is where the work lives. I don’t know yet whether these things are in my DNA or have been pressed into me by culture and expectation.
My paintings don’t resolve that. They just keep asking.
Illustration
