In the sixteen-plus years of Creative Boom’s existence, the team and wider community have fostered a readership that spans the world. For several months, we very memorably even harboured a regular online visitor based in Antarctica. Where we have rarely broken through, and by extension, where we think very few of our readers are from or have even visited, is Central Asia.
The vast swathes of land from Russia to China, largely made up of the ‘Stans, have seen trade routes pass innovation, spice and precious cargo from the Far East to Europe and back for millennia. Further north, the wild landscape has remained more untamed – to our average online visitor, all are untravelled. This month, through to 20 November, the country’s famed centre of communion and commerce welcomes the world.
Commissioned by Gayane Umerova, the Chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF), the sprawling multifaceted celebration is the crown jewel of several years of extensive international positioning. The festival serves not only as an invitation to foreign tourists, but also as a signpost to broader cultural advancements throughout the country. Most ambitiously of all, it is a cornerstone of the national action to enhance livelihoods and careers for the country’s young people, where, unlike in the West, two-thirds are aged under thirty. Offering a route into tourism and the service industries, or emboldening the artisan crafts of the region, are all intended to help with employment and purpose.
Harnessing art and culture for soft power is no new idea. Even the idea of hosting a massive art exhibition every other year can be traced back to Venice and the 19th Century. But what Bukhara is introducing in this first edition, led by LA-born Artistic Director Diana Campbell, is a unique proposition. Every artist exhibiting has not merely created the work displayed in Uzbekistan, but has also collaborated with a local craftsperson. This huge undertaking has been in the planning for many years, with a vast number of contributors who have never collaborated with someone before, and even fewer having any prior understanding of traditional and regional artisan practices. A more in-depth examination of this aspect of the biennial will follow in a subsequent article.
The debut edition of the biennial is entitled ‘Recipes for Broken Hearts’ and, like many great titles, it comes from an old story. The myth goes that a prince was forbidden to marry his young love, the daughter of an artisan. In consolation, he was given the national dish of plov – a warming rice dish with lamb and vegetables, served somewhat like biryani.
The name has been taken at face value, and also skewed through translation and interpretation. In fact, with Uzbekistan being part of the USSR until the early ’90s, the Cyrillic alphabet has been in use for decades, despite a more recent political shift to incorporate the Latin script across the country. At the biennial, initial signage and programming were released in English,