The first Bukhara Biennial - Recipes for Broken Hearts

article

DATE

26 Nov 2025

AUTHOR

Katya Savchenko

The first Bukhara Biennial - Recipes for Broken Hearts

AUTHOR

Katya Savchenko

The launch of the contemporary art biennial in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, this September has been regarded as one of the most intriguing art events of 2025. Hosting blue-chip artists, emerging Uzbek talent and local artisans within UNESCO-listed sites for the first time ever, the project was featured on numerous must-see lists and attracted a saturated crowd of art and media professionals to its grand opening. My own visit in late October, well into the exhibition’s run, offered a different perspective. Within the fabric of daily life, the biennial unfolded as a particularly meaningful encounter, as I observed the project’s narratives and spaces being naturally appropriated and reflected upon by the diverse local audiences.

Bukhara is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with a centuries-long tradition of hospitality. Situated along the Silk Roads, since the 1st century it has been developing as an important trade centre and was admired by generations of travellers for its cultural and intellectual richness. The new Bukhara Biennial, according to Gayane Umerova, its commissioner and chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, serves a broader ambition to revitalise the ancient city by fostering contemporary cultural presence alongside ongoing restoration and preservation works. In line with this plan, a Dubai-based architect, Wael Al Awar, was invited to attune the old urban fabric of Bukhara to present-day public needs prior to the event, while the exhibition itself occupied renovated squares, caravanserais and madrasas.

The curatorial methodology of the inaugural biennial follows a similar approach: all artworks are new commissions developed through close collaborations between Bukharian generational artisans and contemporary artists. With around seventy projects featured in the biennial, one cannot understate the extent of mediation and logistics carried out by the team to facilitate these multilingual and multicultural encounters. As I learned, some of these collaborations also led to collective practices that went beyond immediate production demands. To create a complex web-like installation La Sombra Terrestre [The Earth’s Shadow], Colombian artist Delcy Morelos and her team worked with local weavers, but invited them to apply, together, indigenous weaving techniques of the Americas, thereby enabling a reciprocal learning experience.

The concept of the biennial Recipes for Broken Hearts, conceived by its artistic director Diana Campbell, addresses the traumas and ruptures that leave lingering traces across human, material, and environmental histories, while proposing engagement with art as a symbolic, yet potent, act of healing. Given that crises demanding care are a constant in human life, the responses to this framework felt personal and naturally varied across media, method, and scale. Some, like Croatian artist Hana Miletić and the Indian-English duo Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser), focused on material decline. Moved by the ingenuity of local DIY repair practices, Miletić collaborated with master gold embroiderers Bakhshillo Jumaev and Mukkadas Jumaeva to tend to the cracks on the Khoja Kalon Mosque with fine goldwork. The intimate acts of domestic maintenance were therefore positioned as equally significant as the restoration of historical sites. Hylozoic/Desires worked with Rasuljon Mirzaahmedov, a ninth-generation ikat weaver, on a project honouring the ecological collapse of the Aral Sea. Their newly woven ikat tapestry, patterned after satellite images tracing the sea’s decline, now spans the city’s main canal.

The title Recipes for Broken Hearts refers to a tale (one of several) about the invention of palov, the national Uzbek rice dish recognised by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage. According to this story, the dish was first prepared as a remedy for a heartbroken Emir of Bukhara by the renowned first-century polymath Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Several participants in the biennial, including Subodh Gupta and Carsten Höller, explored the broader therapeutic potential of cooking and communal eating (palov is traditionally shared), while others revisited Avicenna’s expansive intellectual legacy, including his early observations on the connections between physical and mental well-being. Bukhara-based artist Oyjon Khayrullaeva collaborated with mosaicists Raxmon Toirov and Rauf Taxirov to translate her digital collages into six tile panels, each depicting a vital organ, installed across the city. In her reflection on healing practices, she drew upon Avicenna’s writings, her family’s experiences of illness and recovery, and the traditions of domestic medicinal knowledge.

Further artistic inquiries at the biennial engaged with wounds rooted in complex family histories and social structures. Artist Taus Makhacheva collaborated with the Oydin Nur women’s shelter in her research into forms of solidarity and support within female communities that enable transformation and empowerment. Her investigation materialised in a series of metal objects: large-scale inverted fruits and sculptural pieces that reinterpret traditional Uzbek bridal jewellery. The projects of Jenia Kim with Zilola Saidova, Zokhir Kamolov, Said Kamolov and Makhfuza Salimova; Daria Kim with Akmal Muhiddinov, Azamat Nashvanov, Khristofor Kan and Anatoly Ligay; as well as Jeong Kwan, a chef and Buddhist monk, addressed the histories of one of Uzbekistan’s largest diasporic groups, the Koryo-saram (to which my own family belongs), descendants of Koreans forcibly resettled to the territories of contemporary Uzbekistan from the Soviet Far East in the late 1930s.

Despite the overall strength of the artistic input and nuanced curating, what struck me the most at the first Bukhara Biennial was the ease with which the project settled into the city. Not only did the multiple public art pieces transform the city’s landscape, but the event as a whole effortlessly fell within the city’s familiar routines. I saw Antony Gormley and Temur Jumaev’s outdoor installation used by mothers as a playful tool for introducing their children to architecture and associative thinking; the courtyard of the Gavkushon madrasa becoming a meeting point under a woven canopy by Suchi Reddy and Malika Berdiyarova; and several installations turning into improvised settings for yoga or meditation – none of which was part of the official public programme of the biennial.

I also observed the extent to which some works felt personal to viewers. This was most evident to me as I watched Wet Metal, a complex research-driven sci-fi video piece on the agency and choreography performed by human bodies and machines, by Liu Chuang in collaboration with Bahor Ensemble Uzbekistan. The film features images of modernist Tashkent, archival footage of industrial cotton harvesting and recordings of traditional Uzbek dance. As I listened to three generations of women – a grandmother, mother and daughter – beside me commenting on how the scenes resonated with their own lived experiences (like many in Uzbekistan, they spoke Russian, another trace of Soviet cultural policy) – it felt as though this film belonged to their own family history.

True to Bukhara’s traditions of hospitality, the local community appeared ready to welcome the new cultural initiative and the infrastructure that came with it. Even so, forming relationships that are ethical, reciprocal and capable of sustained exchange is a responsibility that demands open dialogue, commitment and consistency. In conversations local artisans involved in the biennial expressed enthusiasm for the project and for the possibilities that future, as-yet-unannounced editions may bring, while acknowledging that challenges inevitably emerged at the outset when working within unfamiliar practices. In holistic healing – an approach commonly associated with Avicenna – a single intervention offers only temporary relief, whereas real recovery requires a dedicated, long-term process. For a similar reason, assessing the biennial as an effective recipe for a renewed cultural positioning of Bukhara will only be possible in light of its future track record.

ADVERTISING

agenda