Maria Hinel & Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek

Maria and Indira are independent curators who met during art history studies at UCL in 2012. Between them they have curated numerous exhibitions internationally. Until 2023, Maria was the head of exhibitions at a major commercial gallery, where she
worked with many renowned contemporary artists such as Jana Schröder, Eric Fischl, Marco Pariani, Georg Baselitz. Indira is running a non-profit organisation supporting contemporary Central Asian artists for more than ten years. She has collaborated with art institutions in the UK and internationally, including Mimosa House, Exposed Arts Projects, the Geological Museum in Greece and the National Museum of Kazakhstan.

Integral to the constitution of our bodies, soil, air and some rocks, carbon is a highly bonding element, which incessantly transmutes from state to state, each particle challenging the boundaries between life and non-life. In the essay titled Carbon,
the chemist and writer Primo Levi charts a trajectory of a single elementary particle of carbon. Taking Levi’s essay as a point of departure, they invite the artists to chart their own biography of a carbon particle among its innumerable possibilities. The exhibition will trace environmental movement of carbon back to elemental transformations in a living and non-living body.

Public Programme includes:
Curator-led tours for local universities and schools (free public entry)
Free public lectures by the specialists/curators (both online and in person)
Panel discussions with the artists
Charcoal drawing workshop and carbon discussions for school kids
Collaborative event with the Icarus Complex, a climate change solution magazine (non-profit organization)