About
Artist Statement
Between the steppe and the Seine, between gesture and stillness — I paint what language cannot hold.
Born in Kazakhstan, I grew up surrounded by the vast silence of Central Asia — a landscape that taught me color before I knew its name. Art was never a choice; it was the first language I understood. After studying at the Umai School of Art, I carried that instinct to Paris, where the legacy of European modernism gave it new form.
My work lives in the tension between control and surrender. I build surfaces in acrylic on canvas — layering, scraping, covering, revealing — searching for the moment a painting begins to breathe on its own. Cy Twombly taught me that a mark can carry memory. Rothko showed me that color alone can open a door. Hantaï proved that what you conceal matters as much as what you show. And Miró reminded me that seriousness and play are the same thing.
Each canvas is an excavation. I am not illustrating an idea — I am finding one.
Biography
Jibek Sultanova is a contemporary artist based in Paris, France. Originally from Kazakhstan, she discovered painting as her native language long before she learned any other. She trained at the Umai School of Art, where she developed a rigorous foundation in technique — and a lifelong refusal to be confined by it.
In Paris, Sultanova found the creative lineage she had always felt connected to. Her work draws on the gestural intensity of Cy Twombly, the chromatic depth of Mark Rothko, the concealed geometries of Simon Hantaï, and the restless inventiveness of Joan Miró. Working in acrylic on canvas, she builds layered surfaces that oscillate between intention and accident, structure and erosion.
Her paintings do not depict — they uncover. Each work is a record of a search: for the point where color becomes feeling, where a mark becomes meaning, where a surface becomes a world.
Sultanova lives and works in Paris.
Exhibitions & CV
Exhibition history coming soon.
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