Bukhara Biennial announces the appointment of Kulapat Yantrasast as Artistic Director of its 2027 edition, set to take place September 3—November 21, 2027 in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Conceived and commissioned by Gayane Umerova and the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF), Yantrasast will succeed Diana Campbell as Artistic Director and build on the foundations established by the acclaimed inaugural biennial that drew an estimated 1.8 million visitors to the UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art 2025.With recent projects including the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, Dib Contemporary Art Center in Bangkok, the ilmi Science Discovery & Innovation Center in Riyadh, and forthcoming projects at the Musée du Louvre, Yantrasast sits at the nexus of culture, exhibition making, and museumology as one of the most in-demand practitioners working in the field today. Yantrasast and ACDF collaborated on When Apricots Blossom at Palazzo Citterio during Milan Design Week 2026—shortlisted for the Fuorisalone Award, with a Special Mention from a panel of media partners and critics. The project united international designers and Uzbek artisans around the craft traditions of Karakalpakstan and the disappearance of the Aral Sea, blending resilience, material culture and the stories communities carry.
Bukhara Biennial is part of the long-term vision of Shavkat Mirziyoyev, President of the Republic of Uzbekistan—to preserve and protect Uzbekistan’s rich cultural heritage, and ensure that its ancient sites, living craft traditions and architectural legacy are actively restored and passed on to future generations. As part of ACDF’s masterplan for the revitalization of Bukhara designed by Wilmotte & Associés, the biennial weaves together the city’s heritage, urban fabric and artistic life to restore Bukhara’s historic place as a crossroads along the Silk Roads. Across an expanded footprint—newly restored caravanserais, madrasas, public squares and historic sites, including spaces open to the public for the first time—Yantrasast will build on the biennial’s commitment to reviving Bukhara’s architectural and cultural heritage.
Central to the biennial’s identity is its model of creative exchange conceived by Gayane Umerova, where international artists collaborate with Uzbek master artisans to produce site-specific commissions, all made in Uzbekistan. More than 70 such works defined the 2025 edition. In 2027, this framework expands further, drawing artists into dialogue not only with craftspeople, but with ecologists, historians, economists and cultural practitioners, examining how collaboration can contribute to lasting renewal in Bukhara and beyond.
“Following the extraordinary response to the inaugural edition of Bukhara Biennial, we are delighted to welcome Kulapat Yantrasast as Artistic Director for 2027,” said Gayane Umerova, Chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation. “The 2025 edition showed how contemporary art and craft can open new conversations around heritage, community, and cultural identity, while reconnecting Bukhara with its historic role as a centre of intellectual and creative exchange along the Silk Roads. Kulapat brings a deeply humanistic and cross-disciplinary vision—one that understands architecture, craft, ecology, scholarship, and artistic practice not as separate fields, but as interconnected ways of shaping how we live together and imagine the future. We look forward to what he will build here.”
As with the first edition, the 2027 biennial will unfold across different disciplines—visual art, craft, architecture, performance, research and public programming—reinforcing its distinctive position as a platform where artistic and artisanal practice come together. The curatorial theme will be announced later this year.
Yantrasast is among the 2026 Art Basel Medalists, honored this year for his contributions to museum architecture and exhibition-making. On June 18, 2026, Yantrasast and Umerova together with Chris Dercon will appear in a conversation moderated by Alia Al-Senussi at Fondation Beyeler during Art Basel, discussing the vision for the 2027 edition and the evolving role of art in shaping lasting civic renewal.
Bukhara Biennial 2027 will run from September 3 to November 21, 2027. Also new for the 2027 edition is the Bukhara Biennial Advisory Board, providing external counsel, comprising Aya Al-Bakree, Alia Al-Senussi, Dilyara Allakhverdova, Alberto Cavalli, Aaron Cezar, Chris Dercon, and Michael Govan.
Uzbekistan claimed me on my first visit—not through its monuments, but through its people: their stories, their generosity, and the quiet confidence of a culture that has always belonged to the world. The 2025 edition was remarkable, reawakening Bukhara’s role as a true center of cultural exchange. My ambition for 2027 is to deepen that conversation—to treat infrastructure itself as culture, where caravanserais, madrasas, hammams, public squares, and gardens become living rooms for ideas exchanged between artists, artisans, ecologists, and scholars. The biennial is an invitation to let art and culture do what they do best: deepen life, honor place, and make sustainability a shared inheritance rather than a distant ambition. This is long work. The biennial in 2027 will end; Bukhara will keep going. What matters to me is that every commission, every restored building, every garden we touch, every encounter between an artisan and a participant is a seed planted for the generations who will inherit this city.” Kulapat Yantrasast, Artistic Director, Bukhara Biennial
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