Mapping the Inner Landscape: An Interview with Oyjon Khayrullaeva

In recent years, a new generation of Uzbek artists has begun to reshape how culture, history, and identity are visually narrated. Among them is Oyjon Khayrullaeva, whose practice moves fluidly between photography, digital collage, and large-scale public installations. Born after independence and largely self-trained outside formal art institutions, Khayrullaeva works with inherited visual languages such as Islamic ornament and traditional textiles, reassembling them into contemporary forms that speak to the present moment. Her recent project for the Bukhara Biennial, called “Eight Lives,” marks a turning point in this exploration. Installed in the public and historical spaces of the ancient city, the work consists of monumental mosaic organs that connect physical vulnerability with emotional states and collective memory. Through the human body, Khayrullaeva maps experiences of anxiety, healing, spirituality, and social pressure, transforming ornament into anatomy and architecture into inner landscape. The Times of Central Asia spoke with the artist to trace how Eight Lives emerged, how collaboration with mosaic masters shaped its final form, and how audiences in Uzbekistan are responding to seeing contemporary art in public spaces. TCA: Can you tell me about your beginnings as an artist? Did you always want to become one? Khayrullaeva: From early childhood, my parents noticed that there was something a bit unusual about me. My father has always called me - and still does - an “alien,” because I’m probably the only person in my family who chose a creative path. No one else in my family has been involved in art, at least not for the past seven generations. I was always a creative child, but I never imagined that I would become an artist. As a child, I tried many things; I went to music school, studied piano, and attended various creative clubs. Still, the idea of pursuing art professionally never crossed my mind. Becoming an artist was, in many ways, an unexpected turn in my life. For a very long time, honestly, until around the age of 24, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do or what my profession would be. I was never certain about it. So yes, life is an interesting thing. You never really know where it’s going to lead you. TCA: Your artistic journey began with photography before evolving into digital collage. How did your early work in photography shape the way you now approach layering, texture, and composition in your digital pieces? Khayrullaeva: When I was around 17 or 18, I became interested in photography. At that time, I didn’t have a camera, so I was shooting with my phone. For my birthday, I was given some money, and I decided to use it to buy a camera. My father added a bit more, and I bought my very first one. It was an incredible feeling taking photos, holding the camera, and shooting. Mobile photography and working with a camera are completely different experiences, and that difference brought me so much joy. I remember the pure pleasure of photographing everything...

Buildings “Full of Tattoos:” Tashkent Mosaics, Newly Protected, Tell of a City’s Rebirth

In one Tashkent mosaic, Shirin, a protagonist in a Persian love poem that ends in tragedy, sits with flowing hair on a colorful carpet. Another mosaic in the Uzbek capital depicts the scientist Abu Rayhan al-Biruni with the planet Saturn overhead and flowing water below. The scientist holds the Tree of Life. The mosaic is located on Babur Street in the Yakkasaray district of Tashkent. Other images portray Soviet-era optimism – a young couple, a female irrigation engineer and corn and wheat, symbols of production and abundance. Tales of degraded heritage in Uzbekistan and elsewhere are familiar, but there are bright spots. In late March, the government designated about 160 mosaics on buildings in Tashkent and other regions as cultural heritage, meaning they are protected, officially at least, from being dismantled, painted over or covered with advertisements. The city’s subway art is also a source of pride. The state sees the images as a tourist draw, and Tashkent residents and other enthusiasts who have campaigned for their preservation are spreading the word. [caption id="attachment_17717" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo by Fotima Abdurakhmanova[/caption] A slick new website titled “Mosaics of Tashkent" offers information about more than 330 mosaics, documenting how artists and architects from across the Soviet Union and beyond put their stamp on the reconstruction of a city that was virtually leveled in a 1966 earthquake. Investigations are still underway to determine who made some of the mosaics. Many were dismantled or damaged over the years and not all of those remaining have government protection. “Each mosaic told its own story, gave emotions, diluted the gray landscape of high-rise buildings, marking the beginning of a new life and a new era,” says the website, which was created by Tashkent’s Department of Digital Development. The quake left hundreds of thousands without homes. One official toll put the number of dead at 15, though it was probably higher. [caption id="attachment_17718" align="alignnone" width="1167"] Photo by Fotima Abdurakhmanova[/caption] Some residential buildings with mosaics on their facades “look like a body which is completely full of tattoos,” Philipp Meuser, a German architect, said during a presentation at the Goethe-Institut in Tashkent last week. Meuser wrote a book about the Tashkent mosaics of the Zharsky brothers – Pyotr, Nikolai and Alexander. The three designers and decorators decorated hundreds of buildings in a city whose reimagined character was shaped by Soviet modernism, regional influences and some Western ideas about urban layout. Two of the brothers were born in France. The Zharskys started mosaic designs with a sketch, and the process was scaled up from there, Meuser said. In one method, colored tiles were pressed by hand into soft concrete that had been poured into a steel mold to create a mosaic. The survival of the art decades later testifies to the durability of the techniques. [caption id="attachment_17719" align="alignnone" width="1078"] Photo by Fotima Abdurakhmanova[/caption] Communism-extolling mosaics were an official art form across the Soviet Union, but the imagery of many of those which survive in Tashkent is not ideological. Geometric...