"Our People", transltion of the article from Harper's Bazaar, December 2008 issue.

Oyu art gallery has held an exhibition “Steppe Metamorphosis”
by Aliza Souleyeva-Alexander this October. Aliza lives and works in
Canada (she already has had two solo shows in Winnipeg and Calgary).
During her short visits to her home city Almaty, Aliza is trying to combine business with pleasure – along with a visit to remind Kazakh art lovers about herself. Having called her unique an Ethnic Abstraction, where she combines graphic art, painting, textile art and grattography, Aliza shares her impression of a fast changing world with the audience.

Aliza is interested in a connection of old tradition with a contemporary.
Bringing East to West, she mixes contemporary minimalist abstraction
with a traditional Kazakh art, particularly patterns. Such experiments bring inspiration to Aliza, besides it is a mission of a foreign
artist of bringing her art to a viewer, educating people about a new culture.
“Artists from Central Asia are accepted
as exotica, no matter what they do.
On the one hand there is a big interest towards our culture. On the other hand as foreign artists we have to encourage an interest to our home
Countries. It doesn’t limit my creativity; it even gives me new impulses to create.”
The very important thing for me, Aliza says,is to create my own distinct style and seek responses about outside events inside.
“Nowadays a lot of artist in the West are keen on creating an abstract pieces of art with warm earthy tones. There is always a
temptation to get carried away by the common wave but it wouldn’t be true to your art.
More honest thing would be to let in a new tendency and then create
something of your own”, says Aliza.
Thus, Aliza has an idea for a new project: to combine traditional Kazakh style with North America People’s traditional art.
The most important thing, Aliza convinced, is to do it that way so people who are used to a certain visual standards would not be shocked by an excessive exotic of an art work.
As an artist you have to convince the viewer that all these things can organically and beautifully coexist together.

Interview by Ekaterina Dzvonik, Harper’s Bazaar Kazakhstan, December 2008.