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Commissioned by Gayane Umerova and curated by Artistic Director Diana Campbell, the debut edition will evolve and transform over its duration from the 5th September to 20th November 2025.
For the first time in the country’s history, the Bukhara Biennial will present over 70 site-specific contemporary projects, with each work conceived through collaborations between local artisans and artists from Uzbekistan, Central Asia and across the globe. Featuring visual art, architecture-inspired installations, performances, poetry and culinary experiences, Diana Campbell’s curatorial vision and title of the first edition, Recipes for Broken Hearts, embraces Uzbekistan’s recognition of craft and culinary acts as art forms, dismantling hierarchies across an expanded, multi-sensory journey.
Under the leadership of Gayane Umerova, the inaugural biennial will unfold over a constellation of newly restored historic sites in Bukhara, marking the first phase of a new cultural district for the UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art. Locations include Khoja-Gavkushon Ensemble, Ayozjon Caravanserai, Ulugbek Tamokifurush Caravanserai, Ahmadjon Caravanserai,Fothullajon Caravanserai and Rashid Madrasa. Illustrative of Bukhara’s architectural legacy, each of the chosen landmarks connects with and builds upon Bukhara’s centuries-old craft traditions to create something new and integrated into everyday life for the city.
Taking from the Uzbek term ‘oshqozon’ meaning ‘stomach’ or literally ‘vessel to prepare food’, the Bukhara Biennial’s Café Oshqozon centres the curatorial concept of the biennial as a body, fed through a nourishing, communal feast of different art forms, inspired by Ibn Sina, known by many as the father of modern medicine who was from Bukhara, and his recipes for both physical and emotional healing. Each weekend of the biennial, an even split between international and Uzbek chefs will be invited to devise a menu, accompanied by an element of storytelling. In collaboration with ceramicist Abdurauf Taxirov (Uzbekistan), OyjonKhayrullaeva (Uzbekistan) will create organs out of large mosaics located across the biennial, connecting the sites as part of one body, with a mosaic in the form of a stomach placed above the Café Oshqozon door. Welcoming visitors to share dishes that reflect global culinary traditions of Bukhara’s history within the global spice trade, accompanied by lectures, workshops, conversations, or film, the Café Oshqozon becomes a space to celebrate food as an emotional medium, weaving stories of grief and healing into performative culinary rituals.
Chef and Buddhist monk Jeong Kwan (South Korea) will mark the opening and closing of the biennial, exploring the preparation of food as an act of meditation. With Uzbekistan home to Central Asia’s largest Korean diaspora, Jeong Kwan honours this heritage by making kimchi and bringing visitors into the transformational art of fermentation, where visitors can taste the timespan of the biennial, when her fermented foods prepared at the beginning of the biennial are uncovered at the closing to be consumed in a meal that celebrates the healing properties of time.
On the 23rd and 24th September, chef Elena Reygadas (Mexico) will explore the migratory route from the Americas to Central Asia through ingredients such as the tomato and pepper, now staples of Uzbek cuisine. Chef Fatmata Binta (Sierra Leone) will explore nomadic food cultures in a project running from the 10th to the 12th October, drawing inspiration from grains that survive drought in Africa and Central Asia. Artist Carsten Höller (Germany), together with Brutalisten Head Chef Coen Dieleman (Netherlands) and celebrated Uzbek chefs Bahriddin Chustiy and Pavel Georganov, will transform food into a nexus of science, art and emotion across the duration of the biennial. Further food-inspired projects include a pavilion made of salt crystals and Navat - artisanal Uzbek sugar crystals composed of grape juice and saffron - by Laila Gohar (Egypt), conjuring childhood memories and the wonder found through taste-based learning; an installation by Slavs and Tatars and ceramicist Abdullo Narzullaev (Uzbekistan) centred around the melon as a gift from the divine, according to an Uzbek local legend; a spiderweb-inspired architectural scale woven sculpture made from spices, earth, desert sand and clay by Delcy Morelos (Columbia) and spice merchant Abdulnabil Kamalov (Uzbekistan); and an embroidered 15-metre mural, mapping the movement of food and spices traded along the Silk Roads by Samah Hijawi (Jordan/Belgium) and Ahmad Arabov (Uzbekistan).
Bukhara’s rich architectural legacy informs Subodh Gupta’s (India) collaboration with Uzbek chef Pavel Georganov, creating a culinary experience housed in a monumental dome cloaked in Soviet-era enamel dishes. The dome structure traces the culinary and architectural links between Uzbekistan and India, collapsing the distance between Central and South Asia, seen in the relationship between foods such as samsas and samosas. The Rice Cultures Festival, co-curated by Diana Campbell with Marie Hélène Pereira, will mark the closing of the Biennial from November 16-20th, gathering rice traditions from around the world, with Jollof Rice from West Africa, Pulao from India, Paella from Spain, and Bukharan Palov. Evocative of the palov competitions hosted by the Emir of Bukhara, the Rice Cultures Festival will be an interactive event for cooking and storytelling, with steaming kazans, cast iron dishes typical for making palov, creating the atmosphere of an emir-era feast.
Weaving together many spiritual and cultural traditions, the biennial programming will present a mix of interdisciplinary conversations and creative collaborations from around the world. The House of Softness, occupying the 16th century Gavkushon Madrasa, will be the biennial’s space for learning with hosted symposiums, workshops and performances. Inspired by the House of Wisdom, the famed library of the Abbasid Baghdad, the House of Softness will be a place for grappling with hardship and softening the heart. A shading canopy will hang suspended from the mulberry trees in the courtyard of the House of Softness, designed by artist and architect Suchi Reddy (India/United States). Entitled Patterns of Protection, Reddy’s canopy draws on the embroidered patterns of Ikat, the traditional Uzbek fabric, with its familiar patterns conjuring feelings of healing and safety, forming a canopy of protection for visitors and a mobile furniture installation that becomes a site for collective learning.
Celebrating the city of Bukhara as a living, breathing workshop, the House of Softness will host participatory experiences, with live masterclasses introducing the crafts of Uzbekistan and addressing the heartbreak of erased traditions. Workshops will foreground narratives of overshadowed craft traditions, such as ebru, with participatory masterclasses led by Bukharan miniature painter Davlat Toshev, inviting visitors to engage meaningfully with this art form believed to have originated in Bukhara - pulling ebru from the margins of miniature paintings, bringing it into the spotlight.
Looking to the healing powers of movement and music through a multi-room installation, Shakuntala Kulkarni (India) will work with the Bukhara Philharmonic, forming a dialogue between body language and sound, working with singers, dancers and musicians. Collaborating with cinematographer Ajay Noronha (India), famed for 2009’s Slumdog Millionaire, another room will invite visitors to peer into a Tandoor, which like a womb evokes comfort and healing, with a film played at its base. Filmmaker Majid al Remaihi (Qatar) collaborates with Bukhara-based puppeteers to reinterpret the folkloric figure of Nasreddin, a lost wanderer who had misplaced both his donkey and his wit. Blending documentary interviews with local residents, the installation and video work explores humour as a form of collective resilience. Tarek Atoui (Lebanon), will engage with Uzbek musicians in a contemporary celebration of living traditions that link his long-term engagement with how music traditions migrate across Asia through the Arab world and beyond, with performances and workshops running from the 21st to the 23rd September.
Accompanying their kilometres-long ikat tapestry that runs through the biennial as a textile artery, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser, India/UK) will perform a musical ritual with karnay performers, summoning water from the sky on the eve of each full moon in September, October, and November.
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