Ziyakhan Ziyashevich Shaigildinov (Shai-Ziya; Shaiziya; Zi-sha; Shi-Zia) was a videographer, contemporary Kazakh artist, curator, hoaxer, and co-founder of the Party of Indifference. His works include video art, performances, art objects, collages, and photographs. Key methods in his work: video documentation, semiotics, play, irony, and mysticism. Key themes: everyday life, urban life.
From 1974 to 1990, Shai-Ziya worked in the photo labs of the Kazselzashchita Design Bureau and in the Almaty State Theater and Art Institute (now Kazakh National Academy of Arts named after T. Zhurgenov, Almaty). He was a lighting technician, set designer, cinematographer (Kazakhfilm), independent television journalist (WTW Pictures, Inc, USA and KTK, Kazakhstan), and a diploma winner in the Zhiger documentary film competition (Kazakhstan, 1980, 1982).
In his work, Shai-Ziya used video as an artistic tool and a means of documenting events. He sometimes turned individual stories into independent video works (Anti-Butya, 1994, 3 min., composer — Vadim Ganza). Shai-Ziya used everyday objects to create his art objects, collages, and performances (installation Door, 1988; performance Bed, 1998). He ironized reality and invited everyone around him to join him (action-exhibition PopArt, club Shai-Ziya & Co, group Ganza, gallery on the corner of Kunaev Street and Zhibek Zholy Avenue, Almaty, Kazakhstan, 1989). In the mid-1990s, Shai-Ziya became interested in alternative medicine and psychology. As a “psychic artist,” he reflected on the playful aspect of life, mysticism, and extrasensory perception (Bioenergy Module, 1995; Betting with Irons, 1994–1996).
Shai-Ziya's works have been exhibited in Kazakhstan and abroad: Gallery Parade (A. Kasteev State Museum of Art, Kazakhstan, 1995, 1998, etc.), No Mad's Land (The House of World Cultures, Germany, 2002), Trans Forma (Centre d'Art Contemporain, Switzerland, 2002), Allusive Form: Painting as Idea (Zimmerli Art Museum, USA, 2005). Some of them are kept in the collection of the Zimmerli Art Museum, USA.
The artist's video art is kept in the Shai-Ziya family video archive, a collection of the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture.
*Shai-Ziya's autobiography states that he was born in 1948, but his passport and death certificate indicate 1950.
Photograph provided by Asemgul Krylova, heir and eldest daughter of Shai-Ziya