Uzbekistan to Get First Major International Biennial

The Uzbekistan Arts and Culture Development Foundation has announced the launch of the country’s inauguralBukhara Biennale, opening in the titular city’s renewed historic district September 5, 2025. The international event is the first of its kind to be mounted in Uzbekistan and is being touted as one of the largest international art biennials in Central Asia. Admission to the Biennale, which will be spread out among the mosques and madrassas for which Bukhara is known, will be free.

The event’s inaugural edition is being curated by Los Angeles–based curatorDiana Campbell, the artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation in Bangladesh and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit. Titled “Recipes for Broken Hearts,” the exhibition is themed around food and healing and responds to the fable connected withplov, the Uzbek national rice dish, which avers that it was created to tempt the appetite of a prince miserable that he could not marry the impecunious girl with whom he had fallen in love. Food will be in abundance at the Biennial, with local and international chefs cooking on-site. All works appearing in the biennial will be created in Uzbekistan. Among the participants are international artists including Antony Gormley, Pakui Hardware, Wael Shawky, Slavs and Tatars, and Himali Singh Soin; and Uzbek artists such as Aziza Azim, Behzod Boltaev, Gulnoza Irgasheva, Oyjon Khayrullaeva, and Hassan Kurbanbaev.

“For centuries, religious and cultural traditions from all corners of the world have commingled in Bukhara, resulting in a rich atmosphere of learning, craft and artistic production,” said Campbell in a statement. “It has always been a place where people came together to find togetherness in the quest for a more meaningful life through a search for spiritual, intellectual, and worldly knowledge. ‘Recipes for Broken Hearts’ will emphasize this legacy by revitalizing some of the extraordinary sites that were essential to developing the culture that we celebrate today, bringing them back into the pulse of life of the city through an interdisciplinary event which goes beyond the traditional notions of an art biennial.”