About

Elvira Sharif

Interdisciplinary artist and photographer based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, working at the intersection of data art, photography and textile art. My practice turns statistics and lived experience into material form, with a continuing concern for care, invisibility, memory, dignity and testimony.

Recent work addresses gender-based violence in Kyrgyzstan through data-driven relief painting. Current research concerns traumatic memory and dementia: what happens to the memory of violence when memory itself begins to disappear.

Exhibitions

Where the work has been shown

  • 2025Tirek: The Thread of Her LifeAlmaty Gallery, Almaty, Kazakhstan · 5–15 December · programme
  • 2025Tirek: The Thread of Her LifeNational History Museum of the Kyrgyz Republic, Bishkek · 11–28 July · programme
  • 2015Exhibition of children's photographsOrganised with Help Today, Bishkek · press

Residency & talks

Programmes and public speaking

  • 2024–25Art-Kazan: Where art meets dataData-art residency of the UN Women regional programme “Making Every Woman and Girl Count” and School of Data. Selected from over 200 applicants across Central Asia. Training by Stefanie Posavec. · about the programme
  • 2025Panel: Violence and vulnerabilityData-art session “Statistics and vulnerability: stories made visible”, Almaty Gallery, 6 December
  • 2025Artist talksAt both exhibition openings, Bishkek and Almaty

Publications & awards

In print

  • 2025The Astana Times“Giving Heartbeat to Data: Central Asian Female Artists Challenge Silence Through Art”, 12 December
  • 2025Kaktus.media“Art and data: exhibition Tirek opens in Bishkek”, 11 July
  • 2025Catalogue of data-art worksUN Women Europe and Central Asia, English and Russian editions
  • 2023Selin MagazineIssue 33 Vol. 30, Amsterdam
  • 2013First Place, “Bright Moments Every Day”Photography competition, Bishkek · announcement

Background

Before and alongside

Co-founder and coordinator of Help Today (2014–2018), a volunteer movement working with children and older people in institutional care across Kyrgyzstan.

MBA, Academy of Management under the President of the Kyrgyz Republic. BA in Management, Kyrgyz State Pedagogical University. Fifteen years in marketing and communications before working as an artist.

Kyrgyz — native. Russian — native. English — fluent in reading and writing, conversational in speech.

Download the full portfolio (PDF)