Zi Kakhramonova

Archive of Lost Forms, 2026

Researching the material and biological make-up of the Aral, Zi Kakhramonova crafts a new myth through its lost life forms.

If salt is considered the pervasive remnants of the Aral Sea, for Kakhramonova, salt instead facilitates discovery and creation.

Her salt expanse in miniature is dotted with ceramic moulds, modelled from creatures that used to inhabit the Aral. The viewer presses salt into the moulds to return, temporarily, physical form to these extinct creatures. Running our hands across the grains and rubbing them between our fingers, salt becomes more than an abstracted statistic – a measure of salinity or percentage of dust composition. It crystallises between the fibres of clothes, gets tangled in hair, is breathed into lungs. Archive of Lost Forms continues her interest in activating materials through participatory artworks. Highlighting the role of play not as a frivolous endeavor but a key way of learning about the world, Kakhramonova invites new understandings of history and place through a physical closeness with its materials.