The ancient city of Bukhara, once a flourishing intellectual and trading hub along the Silk Road, has emerged as Central Asia’s newest cultural destination with the launch of its inaugural biennial in September 2025. The Bukhara Biennial, titled “Recipes for Broken Hearts,”is Uzbekistan’s first major international contemporary art event and, one of the most ambitious cultural initiatives in Central Asia to date.
A Vision for Cultural Renaissance
The biennial runs from September 5 to November 20, 2025, across newly restored historic landmarks spanning a 500-meter stretch of Bukhara’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed Old City. Commissioner Gayane Umerova, Chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, has positioned this event as part of a broader governmental push to use culture as a catalyst for national development and international recognition.
The initiative reflects President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s vision of placing culture and heritage at the core of Uzbekistan’s national development strategy. For Umerova, who serves as Deputy Head of the Department of Social Development of the Presidential Administration, the biennial represents “a significant legacy-building milestone for the city of Bukhara and Uzbekistan more widely, with the city’s first placement on the global contemporary cultural map”.
Curatorial Vision: Art as Healing
At the helm of this inaugural edition is Diana Campbell, the Los Angeles-born curator renowned for her work as founding artistic director of the Dhaka Art Summit. Campbell, who has appeared on ArtReview’s Power 100 list from 2019-2024, brings her expertise in bridging art, craft, design, and architecture to this Central Asian context.
The biennial’s evocative title derives from a beloved Uzbek legend about Ibn Sina (known in the West as Avicenna), the renowned 11th-century polymath and father of modern medicine who was born in Bukhara. According to the legend, Ibn Sina invented the recipe for palov (pilaf), Uzbekistan’s national dish, as a remedy to heal a prince’s broken heart caused by his impossible love for a craftsman’s daughter.
Campbell’s curatorial approach transforms this legend into a metaphor for contemporary healing: “Learning from cultures of gathering from Uzbekistan and around the world, this edition is imagined as a free and open-to-all forum that builds meaningful bonds between people, relying on art’s power to connect across vastly different backgrounds”.
Architectural Restoration and Cultural District
The biennial’s physical manifestation is equally ambitious, thanks to the architectural vision of Wael Al Awar, the Lebanese architect and co-founder of the Dubai and Tokyo-based studio waiwai. Al Awar, who co-curated the UAE Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale that won the Golden Lion, serves as the biennial’s Creative Director of Architecture.
Al Awar’s restoration philosophy centers on creating a “cultural district” that prioritizes culture over commerce. His team has restored four interconnected caravanserais—Fathullajon, Ayozjon, Ahmadjon, and Mirzo Ulugbek Tamakifurush—along with the Gavkushon Madrasa, Rashid Madrasa, and the Khoja Kalon Mosque. These sites represent the first phase of what will become a permanent cultural infrastructure for the city.
The restoration process involved converting asphalt roads into tessellated brick walkways, diverting traffic to create pedestrian-friendly routes, and installing minimal lighting that highlights the architecture without overwhelming it. A network of cultural trails now connects major monuments with everyday neighborhoods, many following the path of the historic Shakhrud Canal that once brought water to the city.
Collaborative Art-Making
The biennial features over 200 participants from 39 countries, creating more than 70 site-specific works. What distinguishes this event from other international art exhibitions is its emphasis on collaboration between international artists and local artisans. Every artwork commissioned for the biennial is being made in Uzbekistan, involving collaborations with master craftspeople specializing in woodcarving, ikat weaving, mosaic work, and embroidery.
Notable participating artists include Antony Gormley, Subodh Gupta, Carsten Höller, Tavares Strachan, and Jeong Kwan from the international contingent. Uzbek and Central Asian artists featured include Jahongir Bobokulov, known for painting on mattress foam, Daria Kim, a young Uzbek-Korean diaspora artist working with the Korean-Uzbek art collection, and Gulnur Mukazhanova, Aisultan Seitov, and Saule Suleimenova from Kazakhstan.
One standout collaboration involves Indian artist Subodh Gupta working with Uzbek tableware artisan Baxtiyor Nazirov on “Salt Carried by the Wind” (2024-2025), an installation built with mass-produced enamelware commonly found in Uzbek homes. The work responds to the architecture of Magoki Attori, the oldest standing mosque in Central Asia, where Gupta also performs cooking as a ritual.
The AlMusalla Prize has been launched as an international architecture competition for designing a new prayer and contemplation space, while a children’s library pop-up occupies the 19th-century Pochakul Khoja Mosque. These initiatives ensure that the biennial engages multiple generations and serves the local community beyond the art world audience.
International Recognition and Impact
The inaugural Bukhara Biennial has already garnered significant international attention from major art publications and cultural institutions. Anna Lublina, a European artist participating in the biennial, emphasized its importance in decentering Western art discourse: “It’s really important project that we all need to engage in and reentering the art centers away from the western white world… I think the special focus on collaborating with local artists is really amazing and unique”.
The event represents part of Uzbekistan’s broader cultural strategy, which includes the development of the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Tashkent (opening March 2026) and the construction of a new State Museum of Arts designed by Tadao Ando.
Sustainability and Long-term Vision
Unlike many temporary art events, the Bukhara Biennial is designed as a sustainable cultural platform. Between biennials, the restored landmarks and cultural nodes will remain active, hosting workshops, performances, and research programs. The BBBB Curatorial School, developed with the Delfina Foundation, will extend the biennial’s educational impact internationally.
Al Awar emphasizes that the cultural district “is not for the biennial, it has to be inclusive. There is a biennial that brings people here to allow for conversations to occur with the outer world, but the platform is for the local people, to benefit the local crafts”.
The biennial also serves as a testing ground for urban renewal strategies that could be applied to other historic cities facing similar challenges of preservation versus development. Al Awar’s approach of prioritizing “culture over commerce” offers an alternative model to the tourist-focused restoration seen in nearby Samarkand.
By grounding contemporary art practice in centuries-old traditions of craftsmanship and cultural exchange, the biennial creates what Campbell calls “meaningful transformations” that extend far beyond the ten-week exhibition period. As Bukhara reclaims its historical role as a crossroads of creativity and learning, it offers the global art world a fresh perspective on how tradition and innovation can coexist in mutually enriching ways.
The biennial’s free admission policy and community-centered programming ensure that this cultural renaissance serves not just international visitors, but the craftspeople, families, and communities who have maintained Bukhara’s cultural traditions across centuries of change. In doing so, it fulfills Campbell’s vision of creating “recipes” for healing—not just broken hearts, but the disconnections between past and present, local and global, tradition and innovation that characterize our contemporary moment.
To know more about Bukhara Biennial, check out their official website.
Cover Image: Oyjon Khayrullaeva (Uzbekistan) in collaboration with Raxmon Toirov and Rauf Taxirov (Uzbekistan) Eight Lives, 2024–2025
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