ASTANA– The inaugural Bukhara Biennial, titled Recipes for Broken Hearts, will open on Sept. 5, 2025, in historic Bukhara, a UNESCO Creative City of Craft & Folk Art, reported the press service of the exhibition.
Photo credit: ACDF, Rafal Sliwa.
The 10‑week event is organized by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation under guidance of Gayane Umerova, as commissioner. Curated by Los Angeles–based Diana Campbell, with Wael Al Awar serving as the creative director of architecture, the biennial will feature site-specific installations and cultural interventions in restored caravanserais, madrasas and mosques.
More than 70 artists will contribute works commissioned in Uzbekistan. The official participant list includes international artists Antony Gormley, Subodh Gupta, Binta Diaw and Wael Shawky, as well as Kazakh artists Gulnur Mukazhanova, Aisultan Seit, Aziza Shadenova and Saule Suleimenova, along with Uzbek artists.
The biennial takes the form of an expanded feast to explore the healing power of art and culture through communal participation. The exhibition will examine time as a key ingredient in art, cooking and healing, and will be complemented by chef residencies, workshops and public events.
In her statement, curator Campbell noted the venue’s significance.
“The heart’s creative power comes into view when we look to tenth-century Bukhara, a time and place that can offer us many ways of mending heartbreaks,” it reads.
Photo credit: ACDF, Rafal Sliwa.
It is believed that palov, a symbol of Uzbek cuisine, was invented by philosopher and physician Ibn Sina to mend the broken heart of a prince who could not marry the daughter of a craftsman.
“Palov was simultaneously a recipe and a prescription—old recipes suggest it as a cure for ailments; when we eat comfort food like palov, our dopamine levels increase, just as they do when we experience togetherness either intimately or collectively. The Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, who specialized in the study of happiness for over two decades, spoke of commensality, a term meaning shared meals with friends, as one of the strongest positive contributors to our emotional well-being.”
The exhibition with free admission will run through Nov. 20.
It should be noted that Uzbekistan has been presenting 17 historic exhibits showcasing the country’s cultural heritage at the second Islamic Arts biennale in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The works include several pages of the eighth-century “Kattalangar Quran,” one of the essential Islamic manuscripts, as well as “At-Tafhim li Awa’il Sina’at al-Tanjim” (The Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology) by Abu Rayhon Beruniy (13th century), “Zij-i Ulugh Beg” by Mirzo Ulugbek (16th century), and the “Tashkent Scrolls” (16th century).
