Bukhara Biennial marks the first contemporary art event in Bukhara of such scale and one of the largest and most diverse art initiatives in Central Asia. The event is commissioned by Gayane Umerova, Chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, an instrumental organisation driving the restoration and amplification of culture across the country and internationally.
 
Titled ‘Recipes for Broken Hearts’, the first edition is curated by Artistic Director Diana Campbell and will celebrate artistic disciplines from across the globe, with new commissions made exclusively in Uzbekistan, in collaboration with several of the country’s most masterful artisans and produced by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation. 
 
The biennial’s debut edition features an interdisciplinary list of Uzbek, Central Asian and international participants, who will each present site-specific artworks and installations alongside a programme of events, performances and culinary activations.

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Hera Büyüktaşcıyan
in collaboration with Islom Khudoyberdiev
Under the Mulberry Tree, the Wind Sang Our Names, 2024–2025

Hera Büyüktaşcıyan investigates the material and symbolic role of mulberry trees in instrument making, and her personal history, extending her ongoing research into sound, materiality, and transformation. Centred on three fragmented heart forms made from once-living beings (cow and fish skin and silkworms) whose bodies are used as material components in traditional Uzbek instruments, the installation features suspended, unfinished mulberry-wood instruments created in collaboration with Islom Khudoyberdiev. Together they developed a sound piece that evokes the acoustic essence of a heartbeat  allowing us to sense the sorrow embedded in the act of creating joy. In the words of the artist, “coming to this land of mulberry trees, resonated with cycles of sacrifice, skin-changing and coexistence. Reminiscing of my great grandmother, a silkworm farmer from Bardizag٭, I wanted to look at the mulberry tree as a vessel through musical instruments carved through its body. Like wooden hearts echoing the human touch, ancestral knowledge and threads of production - Forming a bursting spring adorned by mulberry barks from the remains of the carved instruments, retracing the erased gardens of Bardizag that appears as a forgotten score while meandering throughout the rooms. Vocalising distant heartbeats of a cow, a fish and a silkworm – ancient heartbreaks.”

٭Today named Bahçecik in the Adapazari Province,Turkey; once a thriving region known for agriculture, sericulture, and silk production, mainly populated by the Armenian, Greek and Levantine communities before 1915.