Uzbek Art - The Times Of Central Asia

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Central Asia Steps Out of the Post-Soviet Shadow

Central Asia is rarely presented on its own terms. It is more often viewed through exterior lenses like Russian imperial memory, Chinese reach, Silk Road romance, or great-power rivalry. The result is a region made to look secondary to the forces around it, even as its five countries carry deep histories, distinct languages, and identities that cannot be reduced to a backdrop. That old frame is starting to crack. Central Asia is finding new ways to tell its own story. The shift goes beyond tourism or national branding. It is about who gets to define the region, which is still too often seen through the things done to it or extracted from it. Culture depicts the other side of that narrative, a place that has shaped history, not merely endured it, with traditions and ideas that have long carried influence far beyond its borders. [caption id="attachment_49147" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] Sky above Almaty: Qandy Qantar; image courtesy of Saule Suleimenova[/caption] Kazakhstan offers one visible example. The Almaty Museum of Arts opened on September 12, 2025, adding a major institution for modern and contemporary art. Its arrival builds on a broader shift in which private galleries, international platforms, and artists such as Aigerim Karibayeva and Saule Suleimenova are moving Kazakh art beyond folkloric shorthand toward identity, postcolonial memory, and urban life. The reopening of the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture, in a former Soviet-era cinema, adds a sharper symbolic layer. A building once tied to Soviet public culture has become a platform for modern Central Asian voices, reflecting a scene increasingly rethinking nomadism rather than simply reproducing it. [caption id="attachment_49148" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Image: The Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture[/caption] Uzbekistan has made culture central to its international reemergence. The inaugural Bukhara Biennial brought contemporary art into a city more often seen through its monuments, turning madrasas and caravanserais into exhibition spaces for Uzbek and world artists. The same push is visible in the Tashkent Centre for Contemporary Art, Uzbekistan’s presence at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and design projects such as When Apricots Blossom, which link heritage, craft, and the environmental disaster of the Aral Sea. Artists such as Oyjon Khayrullaeva show a younger generation reworking Islamic ornament, textiles, and public space into new visual languages. At the same time, the State Museum of Karakalpakstan in Nukus, with its Soviet-era censored works, gives the country’s art history deeper heft. In Tashkent, the Islamic Civilization Center is working on a different scale. Recognized by Guinness World Records in 2026 as the largest museum of Islamic civilization, it gives Uzbekistan a stronger role in shaping how that legacy is understood today. [caption id="attachment_49146" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] Image courtesy of Oyjon Khayrullaeva[/caption] Kyrgyzstan’s confidence rests on different ground. The sixth World Nomad Games are scheduled for August 31 to September 6, 2026, with events in Bishkek and around Issyk-Kul. That gives Kyrgyzstan a stage for living nomadic traditions, not a static museum display of them. Its contemporary art scene adds a more intimate layer, with artists such as...

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...

Central Asian Perspectives Take Center Stage in Milan

A pale Milanese dawn draped the city in shifting greys, as visitors crossed the threshold into the space of Fondazione Elpis, a foundation created to promote dialogue with emerging geographies and young artists. This time, it was Central Asian artists who were in the spotlight, claiming a shared history fractured by Soviet rule and global currents. The show YOU ARE HERE: Central Asia redraws a regional map, allowing artists to redraw the borders of their belonging beyond nation-states. At the same time, it invites each visitor to relate to the works by locating its place within these stitched, erased, and reconfigured narratives. Curators Dilda Ramazan and Aida Sulova orchestrated twenty-seven artists into a living constellation: from Munara Abdukakharova’s rolled patchwork, its golden hammer-and-sickle motifs softened by the hand-stitched curves of Kyrgyz kurak korpe, to Vyacheslav Akhunov’s furious erasures of scraped notes, the show reassembled in unexpected patterns stories of resilience, resistance, and reimagined belonging. YOU ARE HERE not only reframed Central Asia for a European audience but asserted that the region’s histories are neither static nor singular, they are stitched, erased, reconfigured, and claimed anew by the very people who live them. The Times of Central Asia spoke with Kazakh curator, Dilda Ramazan. [caption id="attachment_31541" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] "YOU ARE HERE. Central Asia", installation view, primo piano, Fondazione Elpis, Milano © Fabrizio Vatieri Studio[/caption] TCA: Can you tell us about the genesis of the show? The show emerged after the invitation of the Fondazione Elpis, whose founder, Marina Nissim, became interested in the region and its artists after seeing one of the Central Asian pavilions at the Venice Biennale. By presenting the complex Central Asian landscape to a European public who might not know it very well, we wanted to give artists the platform for free expression without framing the region from the stereotypical perspective, as is often the case in the Western context. We wanted the artists to reflect on the idea of space and belonging through the idea of locating oneself. TCA: Do you feel there is a growing awareness of Central Asia in Europe? Yes, I can feel and see it, but it is a natural process one should expect within the logic of globalization. The exhibition addressed the impact of Soviet and post-Soviet transitions on the cultural identities of Central Asian nations by showcasing artists of several generations. Some of them had a direct experience of living under the Soviet regime, so again the artists spoke for themselves and the region’s past through their works. [caption id="attachment_31542" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] Emil Tilekov, Traces and Shadows, 2024 © Fabrizio Vatieri Studio[/caption] TCA: How is the theme of migration explored in the exhibition, particularly concerning its economic and emotional implications for Central Asian communities? Migration was one of the key aspects evoked in the show because it is still an experience lived by the artists and/or their relatives and families. Two Kyrgyz artists, for example, raised this issue in their projects. This was the case in the video by Chingiz...

Uzbekistan at the 2025 Venice Biennale: Ekaterina Golovatyuk on the Modernist Legacy of a Soviet-Era Solar Furnace

Is it possible to preserve architectural heritage while working towards sustainability? And what to make of the architectural relics of the past century? Can they somehow take on new meaning rather than remaining a representation of dystopias and utopias of the past? All these questions and more are addressed by the Uzbekistan Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Running alternate years with the Art Biennale, this is undoubtedly one of the most important architectural events in the international arena. Promising to be a thought-provoking exploration of Soviet-era scientific ambition, modernist architectural heritage, and the challenges of sustainability in a rapidly changing world, the pavilion hosts the research of GRACE studio - an architectural firm established by Ekaterina Golovatyuk and Giacomo Cantoni - which operates at the intersection of built heritage, contemporary urbanism, and cultural production. Commissioned by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF), the pavilion responds to the theme of the Biennale’s curator, Carlo Ratti’s overarching Biennale concept of 'Intelligens'. The pavilion focuses on the Sun Institute of Material Science, originally known as the Sun Heliocomplex, a vast Soviet-era solar furnace built outside Tashkent during the Cold War to test materials at high temperatures. What emerges is the paradox of a structure designed for technological advancement that now faces questions of obsolescence and adaptation in contemporary discourse. TCA spoke with Ekaterina Golovatyuk to understand how the pavilion evolved from years of research into Tashkent’s modernist legacy and why this solar furnace has become the focal point of Uzbekistan’s presence at the Biennale. [caption id="attachment_30103" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] Heliocomplex Sun, field of heliostats, Tashkent, Uzbekistan; image: Armin Linke[/caption] TCA: The Uzbekistan Pavilion for the 2025 Venice Biennale builds on your previous research, Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI. Can you tell us how this project began? This is a project commissioned and initiated by Gayane Umerova of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation that works with cultural heritage, museums, and other culture-related initiatives in Uzbekistan but also promotes Uzbekistan’s culture abroad. They have curated large exhibitions in the Louvre, in the British Museum, showing historical artifacts from Uzbekistan, but also art of the 20th century, and Tashkent Modernism is part of their mission in regards to architecture. The Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI project began in 2021, when it became clear that Tashkent had started to change so rapidly that special tools had to be put in place in order to protect the recent architectural heritage that, at the time, was mostly not listed and therefore at risk. Our project team consisted of multiple experts from Uzbekistan and abroad, including a historian, Boris Chukhovich, a team of preservation specialists from Politecnico di Milano led by Davide Del Curto, urbanists Laboratorio Permanente, and an artist [photographer], Armin Linke. For this project, we started by selecting 40 buildings and then narrowed it down to 24, for which we created monographs and statements of significance that described the important values of the building as well as what parts should be absolutely kept and what parts could...