Recipes for broken hearts: Inside Uzbekistan's inaugural Bukhara Biennial

Though international in scope, every artwork at the Bukhara Biennial was made with the help of artisans from the ancient city and its surrounding regions in Uzbekistan.

This single, strict condition is shrewd. By tying every piece to local craft traditions, the new biennial, which opened its inaugural event on Friday, grounds itself firmly in Bukhara.

It also solidifies its identity from the outset, an achievement that takes many similar events years of meandering and experimentation to accomplish.

The city’s history certainly helps. Bukhara has long cast a rippling influence in Central Asia and beyond. It was a hub in the Silk Road, a cultural crossroads. Its bazaars were vital in the trade of silk, spices and textiles. Its madrasas, particularly during the Samanid golden age of the 9th and 10th centuries, established the city as an intellectual centre rivalling Baghdad. Under the Shaybanid and Janid dynasties of the 16th and 17th centuries, Bukhara’s skyline blossomed with the domed structures, whereas others continued to be reworked and reappropriated.

The city bears this storied history plainly, etched in the blue tiles of its arches and its overlain facades.

Bukhara isn’t just a backdrop for the biennial, however. As one of Uzbekistan’s most symbolic artistic projects, the event aims to position the city as a cultural platform for local audiences and international visitors.

The cultural district underwent a meticulous restoration process in preparation. Many of the old structures, long closed off to the public, were rehabilitated partly with the biennial in mind.

Under the direction of Lebanese architect Wael Al Awar, asphalt roads were reworked as tessellated brick walkways, cars were diverted and the cafes and restaurants redesigned. Even the lighting was overhauled, with minimal lampposts to highlight the architecture without overwhelming it.

“Our aim has been twofold, to protect the historical fabric and to give the spaces a new, useful life,” Gayane Umerova, chairperson of Uzbekistan’s Art and Culture Development Foundation, said during her opening speech on Friday. “In partnership with the international experts, including Unesco, we have focused on reactivating our most treasured landmarks as places for making, learning and exchange.”

That spirit of exchange and cross-cultural interpretation is evident throughout the biennial. As mentioned above, each piece was conceived and created with Uzbek artisans directly working with other local and international figures. Unlike many art events or initiatives where collaborations are left vague, every work names and credits the artisans alongside the artists. The authorship is clear.

Through Bloom and Decay is probably one of the first works visitors will encounter at the biennial. A chandelier of medicinal flowers, suspended from the interior dome of the bazaar, can be considered the first of the three-part installation – even though the biennial's curation and layout make it difficult to pinpoint an exact starting point.

Developed by Tashkent artist Munisa Kholkhujaeva and Anton Nozhenko, the work draws on Ibn Sina’s medicinal plant studies and ancient Central Asian rituals to trace the cycle of life, death and renewal.

As mentioned in the guide book – an essential resource for visitors as none of the works are accompanied by plaques – the piece was also inspired by the practices of Tillaev Abdu Mubinjon. a local herbalist in Bukhara’s bazaar.

Spanning several biennial sites, Through Bloom and Decay continues as a healing tea room in Gavkushon Madrasa, then as metallic cubes etched with plant imagery at Rashid Madrasa. Together, they nod towards the biennial’s cyclical curation. Its Ibn Sina influences, meanwhile, resonate with the large theme of the biennial: Recipes for Broken Hearts.

“The title comes from the national dish of Uzbekistan,” said Diana Campbell, artistic director of the biennial. “It’s called plov. There’s a myth that Ibn Sina, who is the father of modern medicine and who is from Bukhara, invented this rice dish to cure the broken heart of a prince who couldn’t marry the daughter of a craftsman.

“A biennial cannot heal the many, many heartbreaks of the world. I think we’re living in very heartbreaking times, but maybe it can help heal certain problems in the art system, which I think, are unfair crediting of makers versus ideators.”

The culinary resonance of the biennial’s theme is manifested in several works.

Indian artist Subodh Gupta’s installation outside the Ayozjon Caravanserai evokes the bonds and poetry of shared meals. The work is made from mass-produced enamelware common in Uzbek homes, remnants of Soviet-era cooking utensils.

In form, it responds to the nearby Magoki Attori mosque, which was once a Zoroastrian temple, later a synagogue and carpet museum. Inside the pavilion is decked with tableware made in collaboration with Uzbek ceramicist Baxtiyor Nazirov. The juxtaposition sets artisanal craft against industrial form.

The installation itself is only one facet of the work. Gupta himself cooks and serves food there, turning the kitchen into a performance and its meals into ritual.

Egyptian artist Laila Gohar’s work also focuses on food and the way it brings people together. Her installation Navat Uy, developed with Ilkhom Shoyimkulov, uses the traditional Central Asian rock sugar as a building material. The pavilion is walled by long strands of navat, which are gradually melting as grape syrup to the ground. This erosion brings to mind the knowledge and tastes that risk being lost, particularly when considering how navat was largely superseded by industrial sugar.

While the aforementioned artworks are presented in the district’s public spaces, several are interspersed within its historic structures. These include the caravanserais. Built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they once housed merchants and served as centres of trade in dishware and tobacco.

At the entrance of the Ayozjon Caravanserai, Bekhbaatar Enkhtur draws on the Shireg ritual, in which molten pewter is poured into water to reveal latent fears. The Mongolian artist recalls his own childhood encounters with the ritual, adapting by casting pewter on to canvas, which is then embroidered by Uzbek suzani maker Sanoat Abduraximova and displayed over the arched recesses of the facade.

Further inside the caravanserai, Wael Shawky turns to Bukhara’s legacy as The Copper City, or Madinat al-Sufriya. The Egyptian artist, whose work often explores the intersection between myth and history, collaborates on his installation with artisan Jurabek Siddikov. Their copper panels draw from the vibrancy and storytelling of Persian and Central Asian manuscripts.

While one part of their untitled work hangs from a wall and bears the bordered designs often found in the illuminated manuscripts, the other features tiled copper panels, from the centre of which sprouts a palm tree, perhaps implying how history, like craft, branches forward and upwards from deep roots.

The biennial continues at the Gavkushon Madrasa, a 16th century centre of learning in Bokhara with its library, prayer hall and many rooms. One of the event’s most awe-inspiring works are presented here.

Blue Room was created by Bukharian ceramic artist Abdulvahid Bukhoriy. The installation decks the former prayer hall of Gavkushon Madrasa entirely with handmade tiles glazed with deep blue derived from plants. At its centre hangs a brass-and-copper sculpture created with coppersmith Jurabek Siddikov. The chandelier-like installation incorporates imagery of algae, fish and flowing water.

“One of my deepest concerns is reviving blue ceramics, not by replenishing what’s lost but by using ancient techniques to shape something entirely new,” Bukhoriy said in his statement about the work. “In tradition, we find not endings, but beginnings.”

The final section of the biennial unfolds at the Rashid Madrasa, an 18th century former school. The artworks here come as ways to heal and process heartbreak. Palestine is represented here, in the only artwork that utilises materials from outside Uzbekistan.

Standing by the Ruins IV is the latest in the series by Saudi-Palestinian artist Dana Awartani, previous iterations of which were exhibited at Art Dubai.

Installed in the courtyard of the Rashid Madrasa, the work recreates floor patterns from Gaza’s Hamam al-Sammara, demolished in 2023, using clay from Palestine. Collaborating with Uzbek ceramicist Behzod Turdiyev, Awartani restores its lost motifs, reflecting on the destruction of cultural heritage through both material and craft.

“Every project is, in essence, a process of mending a broken heart,” Awartani says in her statement about the work. “The heartbreak is embedded in the material itself – in the earth, in the soil – which those of us living in exile and diaspora can never fully possess.”

The strong Arab representation at the biennial extends to beyond its core venue. On Weaving, the inaugural Musalla Prize winner, first unveiled at the Islamic Arts Biennial in Jeddah earlier this year and then displayed at the Venice Architecture Biennale, is now being presented near the famous Ark of Bukhara, a fort initially built in the fifth century. Specifically, it has been set up near the west gate of The Kalyan Mosque.

The site is fitting given the nature of the installation. On Weaving is the result of a collaboration between East Architecture Studio, the UK engineering firm AKT II, and Lebanese visual artist Rayyane Tabet. The project reimagines a communal prayer space as a modular structure built from recycled palm tree wastes.

It comprises stacked cubic forms, with panels walled with thin vertical weaves, which have been naturally died in blues, yellows, reds and greens.

The rugs that have been fitted in the prayer areas have also been woven and dyed with a similar approach. The mud floor is left unfinished, instilling an earthy and welcoming atmosphere to the space. The work may be displayed outside the main venue of the biennial, but it elegantly echoes the event's ethos of bringing the past to the present through craft and collaboration.

Bukhara Biennial is running until November 20

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