MERGEN

akmaral MERGEN
is a Kazakh independent artist, composer, sound artist, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Almaty. Classically trained as a violinist from the age of six, she creates music for her own projects, film and exhibitions, working with Kazakh musical semantics, instruments and timbres across genres and forms — from song and electronic music to cinematic, crossover writing and spatial sound. She graduated from the Kazakh National Conservatory, studied at Musicians Institute in Hollywood, CA, and, alongside music, IT at Satbayev University.

She began under the name Mergen, writing and singing in Kazakh. Her own releases include the debut album 13 (2009), the follow-up AYAN (2011), Qazaq Lounge (2013), a collaborative compilation of Kazakh folk songs she initiated and produced, the instrumental EP Mise en scène (2015), the album Tūn (Night) (2017), dedicated to her grandfather, and the concept album Tales of Mergen (2020).

In film, she made her feature debut as a composer in 2019 and in 2020 was selected for Berlinale Talents. Her film work includes The Horse Thieves: Roads of Time, Qaş, Abel, Crickets, It's Your Turn, Gingerbread for Her Dad, We Live Here and Atomic Secrets (for The Guardian), shown at festivals including Busan, Locarno, Tokyo, CPH:DOX, Hot Docs and Shanghai. Her score for Qaş won Best Music at the Critics' Choice Awards Kazakhstan and was nominated for Best Original Music at the 17th Asian Film Awards and Best Original Score at the Golden Panda Awards; Qaş and We Live Here were also nominated at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA). She has also acted on screen.

In contemporary art, she was the sound artist of the Kazakhstan Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale Arte (2026), creating the spatial installation dübir and the original music and spatial sound for Ardak Mukanova's video installation Qoñyr Äulie. In 2025 she made the music, sound and voice for Balqaş Jyry, a video installation by Artcom Platform presented at the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. She has also composed for the independent theatre ArtKöshe and for a series of short films on Central Asian artists commissioned by the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture.

She mentors young composers at the BATYRLAB residency in Central Asia, gives masterclasses and talks on film scoring, sound and narrative, and writes an ongoing essay cycle on sound and listening. She is currently preparing her next album, producing and engineering her own recordings.