Inga Lāce is Chief Curator of the Almaty Museum of Arts. She worked as Curator at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts between 2012 and 2020. Her research specialises in modern and contemporary art across Soviet and Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia as well as its diaspora, with a particular focus on migration and transnational connections. She was C-MAP Central and Eastern Europe Fellow at MoMA, New York (2020-2023) and has an extensive history of curating internationally, with previous projects including the Latvian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2019); Survival Kit (2017-23); Performing the Fringe at Konsthall C (2020) and Pori Art Museum (2021), Portable Landscapes at Villa Vassilieff, the Latvian National Art Museum and James Gallery at CUNY (2018); Latvian Collection at the Malmo Konstmuseum (2022) and New Visions – The Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media, Oslo (2023); Kaunas Biennial (2023), and Ljubljana biennale of Graphic Arts (2023).

Dilyara Sharipova is an art historian specializing in Kazakh painting and graphic arts of the 1930s–1950s, theatrical and decorative art, and contemporary practices such as sculpture, installation, graphics, and comics, with a focus on women artists. She earned her Art History degree from Moscow State University (M.V. Lomonosov) in 1989 and completed advanced sociology courses at the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1992. From 1989 to 1996, Sharipova worked at the M.O. Auezov Institute of Literature and Art. She later held positions at the Soros Center for Contemporary Art–Almaty and the PK “Monument”. In 2007, she rejoined the M.O. Auezov Institute of Literature and Art under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan, where she earned her Candidate of Art History degree the same year. Since 2020, she has served as Associate Professor, Senior Researcher, and Head of the Department of Fine Arts. Sharipova is a member of the AICA and the Union of Experts (St. Petersburg). She is the author and co-author of Essays on Kazakh Fine Arts: The Formation Period (1930s–1950s) (2008) and Abylhan Kasteev (co-authored with R. Ergalieva, 2014) and has contributed to collective volumes including Kazakhstan’s Fine Arts in the Period of Independence (2009).

Asel Yeszhanova is an Almaty based architect and a cultural activist, whose professional journey revolves around active participation in the broader discourse on architecture and urbanism. She is particularly passionate about fostering design engagement among diverse audiences. Growing up at the gateway to the resettled agricultural Tselina (virgin lands), Asel also gained an early insight into Soviet social policy, and this interest in politics has stayed with her throughout her career. She has curated exhibitions and events on themes as diverse as Stalin’s repressions, skate culture, and labour migration. She is a co-founder and a Development Director of Public Foundation Urban Forum Kazakhstan. This organisation was the first to introduce the issues of urbanism and interdisciplinary approach to urban transformation in Kazakhstan. Now that Urban Forum Kazakhstan is growing and working steadily, she devotes more time to studying the traditional crafts of Kazakhstan, experimenting with the local materials and multidisciplinary collaborations. She was included in the Royal Institute of British Architects book 100 Women: Architects In Practice, highlighting 100 exceptional practising women architects contributing to our built environment. Asel has worked across three continents as an architect.