MABLAB is an artistic duo from Kazakhstan, formed by two sisters with professional background in architecture and arts. Madina and Ainura, both doing arts from early age, they spent most of their lives educating, practicing and mastering their skills in various fields of artistic expression.
Coming from world's leading art schools, such as Central Saint Martins, London, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, Staedelschule Academy, Frankfurt, Cambridge school of art, UK, they followed artistic path into their professional lives. Stemming from master thesis research in Architecture their work explores the themes of architectural Interface.
They create their work through the unique process of experimenting in different mediums. Using 3d hand sculpting and digital hand drawing techniques they create unique carved architectural spaces, landscapes, textures and metamorphic forms. Being exposed to different cultures and have experienced space and distance in their lives they transform their experience into unique 1 of 1 art works that push the boundaries of the perception of space.
Since joining NFT space in June 2021, MABLAB art studio:
- is presenting on a list of world leading curated NFT art platforms, such as Institut, AsyncArt, KnownOrigin, Makersplace;
- have been selected for the artistic residency of Vertical Crypto Art;
- sold around 170 editions of artworks,
- were collected by well known artists and collectors of NFT space.
- their artworks were selected to be a part of world known Art galleries and Art exhibitions at different venues, including NFT London, Art Basel Miami, NFT NYC Times Square, NFT Liverpool.
Editorial
Find our latest interview at Brytehall Editorial:
Behind MABLAB is a pair of sisters, Madina and Ainura Bissenova, who began collaborating professionally when they were both home in Kazakhstan at the height of COVID. During that time, they discovered that NFTs are the ideal medium in which to virtually bridge closed borders, and to develop MABLAB’s signature landscape NFTs that give imagined forms and geographical terrain to the metaverse. The duo speak to Brytehall about their processes and discoveries that led to their career-shaping “artistic metamorphosis”.
In the ‘Metaverse Big Bang’ series, would it be correct to say there are cosmic inspirations? How would you apply this concept to a ‘place’ with no physicality?
Our work is focused around the idea of architectural space. [It’s about] enhancing the experience of space and perception of space within the concept of architecture and spatial design. We create architectural space and bring it into abstract dimension. This abstract dimension in many senses, for us, resembles the idea of cosmic space, a space with no gravity, no point of reference, and helps us to push the boundaries of perception of architectural space. [We come] from professional backgrounds in architecture and [the] arts. We joined the NFT space last year and were greatly inspired by the Web3 environment [in which] to create our new concept collection ‘Metaverse Big Bang’. Through this concept, we wanted to explore and visualise the landscape of expansion and creation of metaverse.
When did the both of you decide to professionally collaborate?
Both of us have been involved in the arts from an early age. We have spent most of our lives practising and mastering our skills in various fields of artistic expression. Coming from Kazakhstan, we spent a big part of our lives studying and building academic careers in art schools in different countries—the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany. Although being involved in traditional art from a young age, professionally we trained in the fields of architecture and photography, mostly based in digital practices. All our mature academic and artistic practices were based on experimentations in the digital field. This was before NFTs [came into the picture]. We share the same aesthetic preferences, so it has always come naturally for us to collaborate...