In this essay, artist Alexander Barkovsky writes about his comfort zone, his attempts to escape it, and the reasons why he ultimately had to return to it.An artist must deceive…

The history of modern Tajik art history rarely mentions the existence of a naive trend in the country’s fine arts. However, in her introduction to the publication Essays on the…

“I wish to see kok-par players – “Steppe Wolves” from Central Asia on the world’s best catwalks. They are not the refined Europeans, just ordinary guys from a remote aul…

Norton Townshend Dodge (June 15, 1927 – November 5, 2011) was an American economist who amassed one of the largest Soviet-era art collections outside of the Soviet Union. Dodge, who…

Despite the rich artistic traditions of the past, contemporary Uzbekistan can not particularly boast about its popular street art. Even in cosmopolitan Tashkent, public spaces sparkle with pristine purity. On…

In the midst of quarantine, I saw Stagnation (Стагнация) by Bobur Ismailov. The painting shows a lonely girl in a confined room with a book on her knees and the…

Author Diana T. Kudaibergenova Diana T. Kudaibergenova is a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the UKRI GCRF “COMPASS” project at the University of Cambridge. She studies different intersections of power relations…

Interview withThibaut de Ruyter is a French architect, curator, and critic. His latest projects include a traveling exhibition for the Goethe Institute in Eastern Europe and Central Asia entitled “die…

“Azerbaijani and Central Asian art have a lot to offer the world in terms of discovery,” – says Rose Issa, a renowned curator and writer who has helped to introduce Iranian…