Hailun Ma: Almaty Skate Girls

The major group exhibition Skate of the Art: Skateboarding Across Cultures at Fotografiska features 21 global artists exploring the international skate landscape. It highlights how photography goes beyond documenting skate scenes to actively construct their cultural imagination—forging transgenerational icons, myths, and collective identities. From August 15 to September 6, 2026, Fotografiska Shanghai and Nike SB will jointly present two special projects: Making a Scene: Inside China's Skate Culture and Hailun Ma’s solo exhibition Almaty Skate Girls, showcasing photography’s role in cultivating local skate culture and its emerging expressions in Central Asian cities.

Almaty Skate Girls, a solo exhibition by photographer Hailun Ma, focuses on a group of young female skateboarders in Almaty, Kazakhstan, documenting how skateboarding has become part of their everyday lives for friendship, self-expression and connection to the city.

Ma’s practice has long explored youth culture, identity and the relationship between individuals and place. In this series, she turns her camera towards everyday moments: girls skating together, waiting for friends, sharing food, exchanging glances or simply talking on the street. The series also pays close attention to clothing and gesture. In Ma’s photographs, clothing is part of the girls’ everyday language of expressing individuality and shaping a sense of identity.

Almaty Skate Girls continues Ma’s ongoing interest in the lives and cultural expressions of younger generations. Through images rooted in streets, communities and everyday encounters, the series traces the connections between the girls and the city of Almaty, recording how they blend cross-regional cultural influences into their own living language.