In partnership with the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation

Conversations | Adaptive architecture, art, and cultural memory

Gayane Umerova, Chairperson, Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, Tashkent Muhannad Shono, artist, Riyadh Shokhrukh Rakhimov, artist, Tashkent Moderator: Dr. Sara Raza, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Tashkent
As part of a citywide restoration initiative led by Gayane Umerova, Chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, historic sites in Tashkent are being revitalized as cultural hubs. The Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), housed in a former diesel power station, along with other heritage sites in the city’s historic mahallas, which will host artist residencies, have been reimagined by acclaimed French architecture firm Studio KO. This session, moderated by CCA Artistic Director Dr. Sara Raza, sees Gayane Umerova and artists Shokhrukh Rakhimov and Muhannad Shono explore the CCA’s role in shaping civic and artistic cultural memory.
Dr. Sara Raza is the artistic director and chief curator of the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Tashkent. She is the author of Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion (Black Dog Press, 2022). An award-winning global art curator specializing in visual cultures from a postcolonial and post-Soviet perspective, Raza has two decades of experience curating exhibitions and projects for international biennials, festivals, and museums. She is a member of the faculty at New York University and is a 2025 Core Critic at the Yale School of Art. 
Gayane Umerova is at the helm of building Uzbekistan’s cultural infrastructure. She is the deputy head of the Department of Social Development of the Presidential Administration and chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation. Her efforts are bringing the nation’s art, artists, and cultural heritage into the global spotlight. Currently, she is overseeing the restoration and development of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Tashkent, poised to become a new cultural hub for the region, and is the commissioner of the 2025 Bukhara Biennial (September 5 to November 20, 2025). Umerova is also driving the construction of the new State Museum of Arts designed by Tadao Ando. She is the commissioner for the Uzbekistan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and Uzbekistan’s participation in Expo 2025 Osaka. Committed to boosting Uzbekistan’s prominence on the international culture scene, Umerova serves as the chairperson of the National Commission of Uzbekistan on UNESCO Affairs under the Cabinet of Ministers. Her public service commitment is evident in her dedication to creating opportunities for young people in Uzbekistan’s cultural sector and fostering a cultural economy that unites communities and generations.
Muhannad Shono is a Saudi artist whose work explores narrative, identity, and the structures that shape human perception. Raised by Circassian migrant parents in Saudi Arabia, his early exposure to censorship – books with redacted words and obscured images – sparked a lifelong engagement with absence and erasure as generative forces. For Shono, voids are not negations but spaces of potential, where new meanings and stories emerge.
His multidisciplinary practice challenges rigid frameworks and fixed identities, embracing entropy, transformation, and the provisional nature of belonging. Working between memory and imagined futures, he employs lines, marks, and voids to dismantle mono-narratives and open up plural possibilities. Shono often operates in liminal zones, combining raw and industrial materials into hybrid forms that resist categorization.
His work invites viewers into spaces of fracture and revision – where meaning is unstable, and stories remain in flux. Through continual reformation, Shono affirms that authenticity is not rooted in origin but in the freedom to reinvent. 
Shokhrukh Rakhimov was born into a family of ceramicists, where he was immersed in a creative environment from an early age. His first mentors in both life and ceramics were his father and grandfather. Over time, Rakhimov deepened his knowledge through formal education, first in college and then at the Kamoliddin Behzod Institute of Fine Arts and Design, where he specialized in ceramics. During his studies, he was selected for the Homo Faber Fellowship 2023 by the Michelangelo Foundation, which allowed him to spend 6 months working with a Greek master, discovering new dimensions of the art world. The object he created with Giannis Zois is called Art Deco Totem (Flora and Fauna) and was presented at the London Craft Week 2024.
Conversations take place in the Auditorium, Hall 1, ground floor. 
Conversations are free and open to the public, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/events/detail/90167/Conversations-Adaptive-architecture-art-and-cultural-memory" target="_blank">book your free seat here</a>. Doors will open 10 min before the event.
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Headsets for hearing aids are available on request in the auditorium. Please check the visitor information page for access details.

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