Creation Myth

In Creation Myth, first shown at the Saatchi Gallery in 2019, Gali paints a story richly woven with the symbols of her ancestors, enlisting the petroglyphs of Kazakh caves and the cosmology of the Tengri, an ancient form of spirituality found in the Steppe. “The meaning of life for followers of the Tengri is to be at one with nature, and in this we are sustained by both the spirits of heaven and earth: the eternal blue sky and the warm yellow mother beneath our feet.” The paintings in this series follow the life cycle of a cell (or individual) searching for union and completion, and they are all made with the artist’s fingertips. Using her own body as a tool, she begins to work once in a state of meditative stillness. Watching particles move through the light, she waits for the cascade of energy which activates “the atoms of my own body which then participates in this dance of energies.” Like a dancer moving to a song, she traces the story’s outline with her fingers, and works pigments into the canvas. The resulting scenes capture the dreamlike logic of mythology, or ancient hunting scenes discovered on the walls of caves.