Eliana Willis

To own a Radiohead record is to inherit a haunting visual world. Here, the art rock of OK Computer (1997) is wed with chalky collages, the downbeat electronica of Kid A (2000) accompanied by jagged alien vistas, and the jazzy abstraction of The King of Limbs (2011) represented by chilling specters. The band’s music doesn’t just ask to be heard; it insists on being seen.
That visual experience at the heart of “This Is What You Get” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the U.K., the first institutional exhibition to spotlight the art surrounding Radiohead. More than 180 objects have been gathered here, curator Lena Fritsch told me, to encourage “thinking about the relationship of visual art and music in a wider sense, to look at album covers differently.”
Installation view of “This Is What You Get” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the U.K. Photo: Min Chen.
The show is a homecoming of sorts for a band that formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, almost four decades ago. From the early ’90s, the five-piece would create music of increasing complexity, the grinding rock of its debut single “Creep” giving way to electronic and symphonic outings from “Idioteque” to “Burn the Witch.” Among the world’s most popular alt-rock bands, Radiohead is today also one of its most enigmatic (the group just announced its first tour in seven years), its strange soundscapes and cryptic lyrics matched by a sparse online presence.
Contributing to the band’s mystique is, of course, its indelible cover art. Since 1995’s The Bends, their album sleeves have been devised by artist Stanley Donwood in close collaboration with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. The pair met while studying art at the University of Exeter in the ’80s and have forged a decades-spanning partnership built on art, music, dark humor, and a shared appetite for experimentation. The Ashmolean exhibition, in fact, doubles as a portrait of their joint practice.
Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke, The Bends album cover (1995). © 1995 XL Recordings Ltd.
“It’s really rare that an artist is involved in the creative process as early as Donwood,” Fritsch said. “His album covers and all the visual work relating to Radiohead are not just illustrations of sounds and texts, but created in tandem with them.”
As seen in the show, Donwood and Yorke’s collaboration has thrived on a kind of restlessness. Fritsch characterized it as “not a development or evolution in a linear sense, but there’s a lot of going back and forth, being fascinated by one artistic medium or style, then getting bored of it before being super inspired by something else again.” Where they threw themselves into computer manipulation for The Bends and OK Computer, for example, Hail to the Thief (2003) and A Moon Shaped Pool (2016) returned them to a painterly approach.
Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke, Soken Fen (2013). © Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke.
Often, too, Donwood sets up a workshop close to where Radiohead were recording, allowing Yorke to easily switch between modes and Donwood to shape the cover art to the music. The process is such that, according to Donwood, “I find it hard to look at [the art] without hearing the music. It’s encoded.” This method of working also birthed Donwood and Yorke’s 2023 series of paintings, “The Crow Flies,” which debuted at London’s Tin Man Art and is on view at the Ashmolean.
“The music and the visual work both matter very much to me,” Yorke told me at that time. “One liberates the other a lot of the time.”
Here are five highlights from “This Is What You Get” that reveal just how Donwood and Yorke have married—and liberated—music and image over the years.
The Collages of OK Computer
Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood, Heavy Snowfall on House (1995). © Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood.
One of the defining albums of the 1990s, OK Computer was Radiohead’s atmospheric meditation on existential dread and urban dislocation. And it had sleeve art to match, created by Donwood and Yorke scanning and digitally collaging a trove of found images—”from old textbooks, brittle magazines from junk shops, what-to-do-in-emergency cards taken from aeroplanes, out-of-date manuals, piles of old photographs,” per Donwood.
“They were literally sitting at the computer together. One person would have a go and then the other would have a go, erasing things or changing things,” Fritsch explained of the creative process that would come to define Donwood and Yorke’s practice.
The exhibition includes test prints from the project—jarring combinations edged by bleached streaks. They appear portentous and disjointed, but purposefully so. At that time, the look of the album “stuck out like a sore thumb,” Donwood said. “But then there were loads of things that looked like it afterwards.”
Notebooks and Faxes
Thom Yorke, notebook featuring lyrics for “Karma Police,” 1995. © Thom Yorke.
Turns out, not all is forbidding in Radiohead land. Donwood and Yorke’s collaboration is threaded with a sense of fun, revealed in previously unpublished notes, sketches, and writings they exchanged over the years. That collection of notebooks and correspondence numbered some 140 pieces, Fritsch said, of which a select number are on display. They offer “a feel of their relationship. It’s a very playful relationship, but at the same time it’s quite serious and very fruitful.”
Among them are faxed letters riddled with in-jokes, comic-like drawings, and a diagram of “Yorke’s worries.” Some of these doodles have even made it into Radiohead’s artwork, including the image of the sharp-toothed bear, now a mascot of sorts for the band; the humor has informed the band’s tongue-in-cheek marketing. Radiohead heads will also love the rare glimpse into Yorke’s notebooks, featuring his lyrics for songs including “Karma Police” and “Fitter Happier.”
The Disquieting Worlds of Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief
Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke, Get Out Before Saturday (2000). © Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke.
Though often printed in a 12-by-12-inch format, Donwood and Yorke’s original artworks for Radiohead’s album covers were created on larger—and more—canvases. They’re also rich with references to our political and social realities. For Amnesiac (2001), for example, the duo produced a series of monumental, sinister landscapes, shaped by newspaper images from the Yugoslav Wars. Created with brushes, knives, rags, and sticks, the works depict ghostly figures against isolated planes in scenes of barely contained violence.
Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke, Pacific Coast (2003). © Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke.
The paintings for Hail to the Thief, on the other hand, take the form of urban maps filled in with neat, colorful typography. Inspired by the blaring billboards of Los Angeles, the works are composed with phrases plucked from the album’s lyrics and whatever happened to be in the air. They form unsettling yet hypnotic readings such as “Stand / Like Flies / Time Is Up / Blind.”
These references in Donwood and Yorke’s art are also a mirror held up to a moment, noted Fritsch, who also pointed out the pair’s early use of the Mac and a page in their notebooks that mentions Dolly, the cloned sheep. “They reflect the zeitgeist of different times,” she said, “of the times that they were made in.”
The Linocut Art of The Eraser
Stanley Donwood, London Views (6 of 14) (2005–6). © Stanley Donwood
Besides Radiohead, the exhibition dedicates space to artworks devised for Yorke’s other musical projects, including Atoms for Peace and the Smile. Unmissable is the linocut Donwood created for the cover of his first solo record, The Eraser (2006). An extensive scene inspired by a 2004 flood in Cornwall, which the artists witnessed, it depicts London engulfed in dramatic waves, the city’s landmarks such as St. Paul’s Cathedral and the “Gherkin” being swept away. A lone figure stands with an arm outstretched, as if to hold back the waters.
Donwood’s original drawing for the cover, created in a style reminiscent of medieval woodcuts, is on view alongside the linoleum block fabricated for the project. The linocut concept was later developed for the cover of Amok, Atoms for Peace’s 2013 album, which captures Los Angeles amid an asteroid storm.
The Membranes Tapestry
Installation view of Membranes (2025) as part of “This Is What You Get” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the U.K. Photo: Min Chen.
Another medieval nod? A massive tapestry that reproduces one of Donwood and Yorke’s paintings from “The Crow Flies.” Created during the recording of the Smile’s Wall of Eyes, the suite of paintings was inspired by ancient maps and fittingly contained eerily textured topographies. The duo then experimented with transforming these canvases into textiles with help from Flanders Tapestries in Belgium. One of these, Membranes, now hangs in Ashmolean’s Music and Tapestry Gallery, offering what Fritsch called “a dialogue between the past and the present.”
It’s a striking sight—an arid terrain overwhelmed by an unwieldy blue form that’s filled in with curlicues and other wavy marks. Seen from afar, the work appears as an aerial map for a nonexistent landscape, made even stranger for being installed alongside a 17th-century tapestry depicting a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and historic musical instruments. It makes for a beguiling juxtaposition; chances are, Donwood and Yorke wouldn’t want it any other way.
“This is What You Get: Stanley Donwood | Radiohead | Thom Yorke” is on view at the Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford, the U.K., through January 11, 2026. More

As the busiest season for art in London heats up, impressive pieces of public art are taking over the city. Last week saw the launch of the annual Frieze Sculpture outdoor exhibition, with artists like Elmgreen & Dragset, Erwin Wurm, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith filling the rolling green grounds of Regent’s Park’s English Garden. Further east, in Bromley-by-Bow, legendary 90-year-old conceptual artist Rasheed Araeen debuted a new addition to The Line public art trail. His new site-specific installation provides a welcome pop of color to the surrounding industrial cityscape.
The Frieze Sculpture selection of 14 new or recent works for its 13th edition, which runs through November 2, has once again been assembled by star curator Fatoş Üstek. Her chosen theme, “In the Shadows,” plays with sculpture’s literal, multidimensional presence, which casts shadows, as well as the term’s metaphorical possibilities, touching on absence, obfuscation, or our shared ancestry. For each work, guiding audio interpretations are offered via Bloomberg Connects.
Rasheed Araeen, Untitled The Line installed on The Line in East London. Photo: Angus Mill, courtesy of The Line.
“Darkness mostly stands for an anticipation of fear and pain,” said Üstek, but she nonetheless encourages us to step bravely into the shadows. “These shadows are deeply buried in our psyches, in our ways of being, and ways of existence,” she added. “Let’s get together and pull the veil of reality, to look underneath at what is actually happening here and now.”
With this mission in mind, the thought-provoking show never shies from complex political, ecological, and social issues. In this carefully constructed arena for deep contemplation, engaged audiences will find themselves suspended at the threshold between darkness and light.
Erwin Wurm, Ghost (Substitutes) (2022), presented by Thaddaeus Ropac at Frieze Sculpture 2025. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
Austrian artist Erwin Wurm has gained a cult following for his absurdist works, which invite new ways of seeing everyday objects. Ghost (Substitutes) (2022) is a painted, larger-than-life aluminum cast of a blue suit, a portrait of a person by way of their “second skin,” Wurm’s term for our clothing. The sculpture alludes to the presence of a human inhabitant but, ultimately, amplifies their absence with its rumpled, slack form. The sculpture connects this to the illusionistic nature of cast sculpture dating back to antiquity, when majestic subjects like goddesses or warriors were “defined by a very thin layer of metal and were empty inside.”
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, King of the Mountain (2024–25), presented by Garth Greenan Gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery at Frieze Sculpture 2025. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
The trailblazing Native American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith died at the start of the year, so it is fitting to see her representing at this year’s edition of Frieze Sculpture. King of the Mountain (2024–25), from her recent “Trade Canoe” series, belongs to a wide-ranging practice that also included printmaking, drawing, and painting. The bronze statue of a buffalo standing on a boulder in a canoe is a tribute to Big Medicine, a real albino buffalo that was born on the artist’s reservation in Montana in the 1930s and was believed to have healing powers. Suitably, the monument is raised on a plinth.
“In my art and life, I really strive to reverse the adage that what you see is what you get,” said Smith. “If I can be coyote and practice my sneak up, I can engage the viewers from a distance with one image and lure them in for exposure to another layer, which changes the initial view into quite a different reality.”
Abdollah Nafisi, Neighbours (2025), presented by Dastan at Frieze Sculpture 2025. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
Tehran-born, U.K.-based artist Abdollah Nafisi’s strange, painted construction of salvaged steel, Neighbours (2025), finds a harmonious balance among its various colorful elements. The two large horn-like forms use the wind to make sounds, imbuing the intricate structure with a surprising ephemerality.
“Even though the steel feels heavy and grounded, I’ve built the work to feel like it’s holding its breath, like it could shift at any moment,” said Nafisi. “That tension invites something more fragile, like presence or silence or even memory.”
David Altmejd, Nymph 1 Nymph 2 Nymph 3 (2025), presented by White Cube at Frieze Sculpture 2025. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
Three frolicking nymphs by Canadian sculptor David Altmejd are caught in motion, clothes twirling and limbs kicking out in a moment of joyously free expression. The beautiful folkloric spirits known as nymphs have an affinity with nature, and Altmejd captures something of their carefree whimsy. As they slip past our eye, we can only wonder if what we thought we saw was real of imagined.
“At first their grace draws you in, but up close their rough, pitted texture reveals a raw and tactile energy,” said Üstek. “But nymphs are wild, unstable forces caught between creation and disintegration.”
Assemble, Fibredog (2025), presented by Plinth at Frieze Sculpture 2025. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
The biggest and perhaps most memorable work included in this year’s Frieze Sculpture is Fibredog (2025), a playful sculpture of a scruffy dog made by the London-based collective Assemble. With ritual central to their practice, the group gathered spare wood and thatch from Regent’s Park and its surroundings and its charmingly makeshift appeal brings to mind ancient ceremonies and folklore. Now, it stands proudly as a spot that welcomes people to gather.
“Inspired by a dead tree trunk, they have bound together branches of straw, thatch, and timber into a totem-like form or effigy,” said Üstek. “It has the feeling of something mythic, like it has always been there, waiting to be noticed.”
Frieze Sculpture 2025 is on view at the English Garden in Regent’s Park, London until November 2.  More

The complete U.S. Constitution has gone on display for the first time in history.
While the National Archives Museum in Washington D.C. permanently exhibits the four pages of the Constitution together with the Bill of Rights, it is currently showing the rarely displayed fifth page. The display leads off the museum’s celebrations of America’s upcoming 250th anniversary in 2026.
Sometimes known as the Letter of Transmittal, it was essentially a cover letter that outlined the Constitution’s purpose and explained how it was to be ratified and implemented by the states. It was signed by George Washington, then president of the Constitutional Convention, and dated to September 17, 1787.
The U.S. Constitution, page 1. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
The documents will be shown surrounded by the 17 constitutional amendments inside the Rotunda of the National Archives. The display will run until October 1 with the museum extending operating hours in anticipation of high demand. The fifth page was previously exhibited for the 225th anniversary of the Constitution in 2012.
“As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, the National Archives is playing a major role in the coast-to-coast commemorations by providing the American people access to their history,” Jim Byron, senior adviser to the acting archivist, said in a statement. “This extraordinary installation welcomes all Americans to celebrate the bedrock of our national life: our Constitution.”
The Bill of Rights, 1789. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
The celebrations don’t stop there for the National Archives Museum. In October this year, it’s concluding a $40 million renovation of the museum, the first in two decades. Included in the project is “The American Story”, a new permanent exhibition space, and a discovery center in which K-12 visitors will learn about American civics.
The redevelopment will include an A.I. element with the museum uploading two million records (from the Archive’s collection of more than 13 billion) to digital kiosks placed throughout the museum. Upon entering, visitors will digitally select topics that are of interest. Then, while exploring the 10,000-square-foot galleries, A.I. will display documents related to those subjects at the kiosks. It’s the first museum on the National Mall to use A.I. in its displays, which Byron has called “technologically innovative and cutting edge.”
The National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. Photo: Robert Alexander / Getty Images.
The museum is also hosting “Opening the Vault”, an exhibition that features a changing display of artifacts connected to the people and moments that shaped America.
Museums across America have grand plans for the country’s 250th anniversary. The New York Historical is pairing historical paintings with the work of contemporary artists such as Lady Pink and Fritz Scholder. The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts are teaming up to display more than 1,000 works by American artists including Mary Cassatt, Horace Pippin, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is staging “In Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness,” which features 250 objects from American history. More

For 15 years, the art collective 4heads was a mainstay of Governors Island, helping make the former Coast Guard base an unlikely arts destination in New York Harbor. Now, they are bringing their magic to Rockaway, staging a new edition of their group show “Portal,” with 35 artists showing in a repurposed military warehouse at Fort Tilden, a former United States Army installation right on the beach.
“We were really sad that the island did not have us back,” 4heads co-founder Nicole Laemmle told me. “We took a one-year hiatus—a leap year.”
Then she and co-founder Jack Robinson, her husband, started looking for a new place to stage an exhibition. They landed in Rockaway last year thanks to Christopher Saucedo, a past 4heads artist who is a board member of the Rockaway Artists Alliance, which operates the space.
“It’s just like Governors Island. We’re surrounded by water, and it’s a pain in the ass to get to,” Robinson joked.
Caleb Nussear, R~mr #2 (2016) at “Portal: Rockaway.” Photo: courtesy of 4heads.
A Celebration of Art in All Mediums
A tessellated mirrored sculpture by Caleb Nussear is among the works displayed on the lawn in front of the building, greeting visitors who make the worthwhile trek.
Inside, Robinson and Laemmle have put together a compelling mix of painting, sculpture, photography, and video work, selected via an open call.
A few works were familiar to me. Kate Clark‘s unnerving sculptures of human faces, transformed with animal hides and with the bodies of anthropomorphized deer, have been shown widely at museums including the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Work by Kate Clark in the foreground, with Bianca Abdi-Boragi in the center and Robert Lach on the back wall at “Portal: Rockaway.” Photo: courtesy of 4heads.
“She’s kind of a big deal—I was surprised she was so psyched to show with us,” Robinson laughed.
And I remembered the life-size, newsprint-covered Coney Island beach goer sculptures by Will Kurtz—a “Portal” veteran I first encountered on Governors Island in 2014—from an excellent booth at the 2024 Spring Break Art Show.
Will Kurtz, Adorra and Just Do It at “Portal: Rockaway.” Photo: courtesy of 4heads.
Also thematically on point was another Spring Break favorite, from 2025, by Bianca Abdi-Boragi, who coated the inside of suitcases with sand she collected in the Bahamas, Martinique, and the Sahara, and used them as shelves to display cast bronze sculptures of fruits turned into telephones. (The artist did the Midnight Moment video for Times Square in August.)
“Portal” exhibitions tend to excel at finding artists working with unconventional materials.
Robert Lach, crutch wheel I (2013) and wrapped l (2015) at “Portal: Rockaway.” Photo: courtesy of 4heads.
A circular, mandala-like work mounted on one wall, on closer inspection, turns out to be made entirely from salvaged crutches that Robert Lach collected off the streets of New Jersey over a period of about three years. Its surprisingly spare beauty is paired with another work by the artist inspired by his former day job as an art handler, made from foam and cardboard tape roll interiors, bound together by packing tape in cell-like accumulations.
And then there’s Cynthia Reynolds, who has two works in the show: a tidy bundle of bubble wrap, displayed in wavy layers in the window to catch the late summer light, and a large trailing sculpture of pink packing peanuts strung together in a surprisingly delicate arrangement.
Cynthia Reynolds, Cope (anti-static): The Rest of Venus (2025). Photo: courtesy of 4heads.
“At our opening, the artist actually wore the artwork. What she eventually wants to do is walk into the ocean with it because the packing peanuts dissolve,” Laemmle said. “It’s really beautiful when she wears it.”
On the other side of the coin are excellent paintings, including a shrine-like display of colorful animal works by Viktoriya Basina.
Work by Viktoriya Basina at “Portal: Rockaway.” Photo: courtesy of 4heads.
More subtle were Jamie Orr’s canvases mixing acrylic with walnut ink, coffee, and saltwater to create gorgeous, swirling abstractions reminiscent of landscapes with a delicate shimmer.
There is even documentary photography, from Stephanie Keith, who has captured harrowing views of ICE agents at work, detaining immigrants and separating families as part of the current crackdown on the undocumented.
Stephanie Keith, ICE Detention at 26 Federal Plaza, NYC (2025). Photo: courtesy of the artist.
A New Era for a Beloved Organization
Robinson and Laemmle miss some things about Governors Island. The exhibition, originally dubbed the Governors Island Art Fair, adapted crumbling officers’ houses into makeshift galleries, displaying art on kitchen counters, spilling out of ovens and dusty cabinets.
That unique vibe was recaptured in John Buron’s Living Room Incursion, a life-size installation of a recliner chair, television (with working screen), living room window, and baseboard radiator all crafted from cardboard, rope, and fabric, painted entirely in white. The objects, mounted on a platform in the corner of the gallery, are shown askew, an ironing board disappearing into the wall as if being suctioned off into some alternate dimension.
John Buron, Living Room Incursion. Photo: courtesy of 4heads.
And the artists have made good use of the space’s soaring ceilings, hanging works from the aesthetically pleasing beams. From across the room, semicircles of orange and yellow macramé by Ellie Murphy face a site-specific Erin Turner sculpture made of countless copies of her own photo on newsprint, woven together over a chickenwire frame into a massive, twisted ring-like form.
It’s the second year in the barn-like gallery for “Portal,” and the plan is to make it an annual event that can grow to partner with other cultural organizations in the area.
Erin Turner, How to fall while floating (2025) at “Portal: Rockaway.” Photo: courtesy of 4heads.
“We’re hoping next year to have a big art month here for August in Rockaway,” Laemmle said.
“We love it here,” Robinson agreed.
“Portal: Rockaway” is on view at the Rockaway Artist Alliance, Studios 6 and 7 Galleries, Fort Tilden, Gateway National Recreation Area, Far Rockaway, New York, August 23–September 21, 2025. The closing reception is September 21, 3 p.m.–5 p.m. More

Earlier this week at Gladstone Gallery in New York, partner Caroline Luce was standing in front of a six-foot-tall painting unmistakably by Keith Haring. A conflagration of bodies in rapture, it could have been a blissful dance floor at Paradise Garage—packed forms, arms outstretched, caught mid-motion. Brash yellow and red shapes vibrate against a pulsing field of electric blue, the surface alive with passionate drips of purple and syncopated rhythm. For all its liveliness, this radiant depiction of community was in fact the last studio painting Haring ever completed. He finished it in November 1989; three months later, in February 1990, he was gone.
Keith Haring, Untitled (1989). Courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation and Gladstone Gallery.
“Every time I see it, I get chills,” Luce said. “What’s really fascinating is that it hearkens back to so many of Haring’s earlier motifs—bodies in poses of dancing, joy, exaltation—and what you have here is a community of people. As an activist, as an artist, as a friend, as a member of family, the idea of joy at a time when he was so sick and knew that he only had but so long to be in this world—that the last image is one of togetherness, celebration, vitality. Even the palette is sunny and uplifting. In this single work, it shows the balance Haring was able to strike—to hold all the joy and love and beauty at the same time as the pain, suffering, and loss.”
Haring’s paintings take center stage in “Liberating the Soul,” on view through November 1. It is a tight edit of eight works, but they’re monumental in scale, uplifting in spirit, and elegiac in tone. Made between 1984 and 1989, they confront both life and mortality with brash color and unrelenting energy. They are also studies in communication: Haring’s signature line, deceptively simple, conveys complex messages about sexuality, activism, and community with disarming clarity. Many are painted not on canvas but on industrial tarps—vast, unconventional surfaces that amplify their urgency and rawness.
“He started using tarps in 1981 to find a different medium that was outside of a traditional painting practice,” Luce said. “He continued to use tarps throughout his body of work. The grommets, the sheen, the fact that the material maintains its integrity and becomes a part of the work rather than being overpainted is all very much a part of it. The size of these tarps evidence is how compelling he was at scale and how his language was really able to evoke emotions and energies in a very signature, singular way.”
Keith Haring, A Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat (1988). Courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation and Gladstone Gallery.
Another startling work is A Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat, a triangle-shaped canvas that depicts a disheveled mountain of his fellow artist’s motif. “Haring painted it almost immediately after Basquiat passed away in August of 1988,” Luce said. “It’s on raw canvas, so it feels a little bit different than the other ones. It’s a monument, and the paint has actually seeped into the surface of the material. It’s poetic and quite moving to take in. He was friends with Basquiat throughout the ’80s. They met when Keith was a student at SVA in 1979, so they were in each other’s lives for that entire decade.”
Tree of Life is another elegy for a lost friend. “She was a student at Columbia and it was a tragic car accident. She passed away at 20, so on the back, the signature in it, he says ‘In memory of Maria Dahlin.’ Christian iconography runs through his work, so here the Tree of Life, is certainly a biblical reference that he would’ve been aware of. And as always with Keith, it’s quite open to interpretation.”
Installation view of “Liberating the Soul: Keith Haring’s Paintings.” Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery.
The painting Safe Sex harnesses vibrant color to capture the spirit of the decade and nods to Haring’s AIDS activism. Brazil could be an ecstatic beach scene of overlapping bodies or a cartographical study. A jumble of intricate hieroglyphs crowds an orange mass pressing towards a cerulean expanse in the corner.
“He spent a lot of time in Brazil,” Luce said. “You could kind of imagine it—the coastline of Brazil, the density of the rainforest. Again, very open to interpretation. Formally, this has a really interesting connection to another major work from the end of his practice, which is called Unfinished Painting, which leaves some blank space open and dripping. And that kind of empty space—is it the Atlantic Ocean? Is it something more cerebral? As always with Haring, he doesn’t want to pin you into one reading of it.”
Keith Haring, Untitled (1985). Courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation and Gladstone Gallery.
A real wild card in the show is an untitled 1985 painting. It’s not shocking that it’s by Haring, but it’s not as immediately recognizable as the rest. At its center coils an abstracted, bound phallus, while his familiar motifs seem absent. Instead, the composition channels the extremes of the decade—the totally 1980s design and color sense of a Memphis-style squiggle and bolt, and beneath it, a grim subtext. The result is mysterious, colorful, and unsettling, a work that shows Haring’s range as well as his edge. A spectral hand surfaces too, grasping and ambiguous — divine, human, or both. Could this be another safe sex screed with a less clear message? Who knows. “It feels universal,” Luce said, “but also very ’80s.” More

Despite the fact that I have seen many, many art shows sanctifying 1920s modernism from seemingly every angle, the “Mouvement Flou” is a new one to me. The term, meaning the “blurry” or “out of focus” movement, is mentioned in “Man Ray: When Objects Dream” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is credited to the Surrealist poet Louis Aragon, who used it to refer to the bridge moment in the European avant-garde between Dada, with its obsession with chance and irrationality, and Surrealism, with its concern for dreams and desire. In that brief both/and moment, a sense was percolating of new possibilities not completely fixed to any single creed.
Personally, I like the idea of “Movement Flou” for Man Ray‘s (1890–1976) particular style of creativity. Partly because, as a singular star of that era, he consorted with both Dadaists and Surrealists without becoming a true member of either movement. But also because a commitment to in-between-ness powered his practice.
Installation view of Man Ray: When Objects Dream, on view September 14, 2025–February 1, 2026 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Anna- Marie Kellen, Courtesy of The Met
“When Objects Dream” is not really a full-dress Man Ray retrospective. Instead, it uses his 1922 portfolio of “Rayographs,” Champs Délicieux (Delicious fields), as a way into talking about the surrounding era of his art. These were experiments in “cameraless” photography that Man Ray made by arranging objects from his studio on photographic paper and then exposing the surface to a flash of light, so that the objects’ shadows left their outlines.
What makes the Rayographs endure as art is the intriguing sense that they exist in-between different ways of seeing. Each image reads as both a Cubist-inspired 2D abstraction and a ghostly photographic document of a specific chance moment. Their composed, hieroglyphic quality, meanwhile, sits in contrast with them as symbols of quicksilver experimentation.
Man Ray, Rayograph (1925). MAH Musée d’art et d’histoire, City of Geneva. Purchase, 1968. Photo © Musée d’art et d’histoire, Ville de Genève, photo by André Longchamp © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2025
Other members of the pan-European avant-gardes played with the technique independently in the ‘20s—the flou times—most famously the Hungarian star László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946). The photogram remains a potential even today, although a minor one. For a hot second, though, the technique offered itself as an area to explore that was in between photography and painting, art and technology. May Ray rushed into the space with all his usual intensity and elegance (though he failed at the self-branding exercise of getting people to permanently use the term “Rayograph”; Moholy-Nagy’s “photogram” won out).
He was good at such stiletto-strike innovation. “What seem to be the tricks of today will be the truths of tomorrow,” he would say.
He was born Emmanuel Radnitzkyin to a Russian Jewish family in 1890 in Philadelphia, and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He precociously eschewed college for the artist’s life, drawn to the exotic European art styles of the period that shocked still-provincial American taste, stripping his name down to the ultra-modern “Man Ray” in the process. In 1910s New York, he made a living in the fast-growing commercial design world as an illustrator. He learned photography out of necessity, on the side, to document his own tries at experimental painting.
Man Ray, Self-Portrait in 31 bis rue Campagne-Première Studio (1925). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bluff Collection, Promised Gift of John A. Pritzker Photo by Ian Reeves © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2025
Man Ray did cartoons for the cover of anarchist Emma Goldman’s magazine Mother Earth, moved to New Jersey, married and separated, wrote some personal art manifestoes, and met his lifelong friend, Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)—all before finally leaving the States in 1921, with the hope that Paris might better appreciate his art. He was in his early thirties. (Charmingly, when he first met Duchamp, Ray didn’t speak French and Duchamp spoke no English; they intuitively understood one another.)
On either side of the Atlantic, Man Ray’s career was marked by restless zigzag experimentation. Correspondingly, “When Objects Dream” goes in a lot of different directions, mixing his stylish greatest hits in experimental photography with his forays into painting, which are less famous—mostly justifiably so, though I don’t hate them.
Man Ray, Paysage suédois (Swedish Landscape) (1926). Photo courtesy of the Mayor Gallery, London, ©Man Ray 2015 Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris 2025.
In New York, Duchamp had made a stir with Fountain, his signed urinal, in 1917. Aside from Man Ray’s photos, his most celebrated works pick up Duchamp’s idea of the readymade and run with it. These include a sewing machine covered in a cloth and bound so you just see its lumpy outline, which became an icon of Surrealism (The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse, from 1920), a flat iron with a strip of tacks fixed on it to make it a weapon (Gift, 1921), and a metronome with a little cut-out photo of an eye on it (Object to Be Destroyed, 1923).
Man Ray, Cadeau (Gift) (1921/1963). Photo by Ben Davis
“When Objects Dream” makes me see how kinetic Man Ray’s sculptural imagination was, how much of it is about creating an object that moves in your mind. Each of these works is about more than form or symbolism; it appeals to your sense that you could activate its mysteries. You think about unwrapping the sewing machine… or what you would do with the flat iron (or what it would do to you)… or flicking the metronome so that it comes to haunted life…
Man Ray, ANPOR (1919). Collection of Gale and Ira Drukier, ©the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo by Bruce Schwarz.
This Met show doesn’t give us Man Ray’s more conventional photo portraits of the Lost Generation characters he met in ’20s Paris (Joyce, Hemingway, Stein, and many others), focusing instead on his experiments with form and process. The other major technique he is associated with is “solarization,” discovered at the end of the 1920s with his creative co-conspirator and lover, the equally extraordinary Lee Miller (1907–1977). She was 17 years his junior and went to Paris specifically to track him down and insist that he take her on as student. By re-exposing film negatives, ordinary studio images were rendered otherworldly, with harsh transitions of light to dark and halo effects that look like the subjects are oozing radiation.
Installation view of “Man Ray: When Objects Dream,” on view September 14, 2025–February 1, 2026 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The electric look of solarization made it perfect for images incorporated into the portfolio called “Électricité,” which was what you’d now call “sponsored content.” These images, mingling lightbulbs, female nudes, the moon, and appliances, were commissioned for ten thousand francs (today, about $7,400) as part of a 1928 marketing push by a private electric power company to encourage people to use more electricity. As the catalogue explains, the final portfolio of images, published in an edition of 500, was “given away as a promotional gift to the company’s top customers.” Working between the commercial and fine art worlds was another productive in-between space for Man Ray.
Man Ray, Marchesa Luisa Casati (1922). Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of Carl Van Vechten (1949-86-4). Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, ©Man Ray 2015 Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris 2025.
During the Depression years of the 1930s—beyond the scope of this show—when Man Ray was broke and reduced to bartering his art to get dental work, he more fully embraced commercial photography for pay. He would lend his name and experimental powers to fashion advertising, with lasting consequences. Richard Avedon credited Man Ray with “breaking the stranglehold of reality on fashion photography,” infusing it with the small-S surrealist energies that linger even today.
Man Ray served as a logical translator of avant-garde energy to a mass public, via images meant to make clothing desirable. The world of artistic experimentation was linked both in fact and in legend with sexual adventurousness, and Man Ray’s relentless formal experiments have a libidinal, even kinky edge. An American in Paris, he took the tormented voluptuary rebellion of the French Surrealists against Catholic conservatism and leavened it with an American frankness steeped in the cheerfully desacrilizing spirit of commercial culture. You see this in his famous Le Violon d’Ingres (1924), an image of his first French girlfriend, the glamorous nightclub personality and artist Kiki de Montparnasse, glimpsed from behind, her body pierced with the F-holes of a violin: a musical instrument waiting to be played.
Man Ray, Le violon d’Ingres (1924). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bluff Collection, Promised Gift of John A. Pritzker Photo by Ian Reeves ©Man Ray 2015 Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris 2025
Such erotic energy powered his artistic imagination in subtler ways, down to the idea of flou itself. Stretching and warping the body insinuated the breaking of conventional taboos around it. Even Man Ray’s photogram process, seemingly safely domestic and focused on still life, is a tactile form of photography. It’s about intimacy and secrets and a form of vision that blurs with touch. The art of the blur evokes the sexual blurring together of bodies; the out-of-focus, the woozy state of desire. This becomes explicit in Man Ray’s 1922 photogram showing two faces in profile (his and Montparnasse’s, I believe), lips locked together, outlines of hands stamped on faces—bodies and minds melting together in an ecstatic moment.
Installation view of “Man Ray: When Objects Dream,” on view September 14, 2025–February 1, 2026 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Anna- Marie Kellen, courtesy of the Met
Perhaps because we’ve been overexposed to his most famous creations, his various films of the 1920s draw me most in the Met show. The first, the short Retour à la raison (Return to Reason), 1923, was made on a night’s notice when friend Tristan Tzara sprung on him that it would be featured in a Dada showcase. The latest, L’étoile de mer (The Starfish), 1928, is a willfully hazy, slightly camp erotic fairy tale, putting images to a poem by Robert Desnos. The film style feels more congealed into a narrative, albeit a dream-like one.
Fittingly for the theme of this essay, I like best the film in the show that comes in between, preserving the former’s loose feeling but predicting the latter’s ambition: Emak Bakia, from 1926. It was funded by a wealthy patron Arthur Wheeler (despite his early association with Emma Goldman, Man Ray did not resist a role as entertainment for the rich and aristocratic) with large parts filmed at Wheeler’s estate, from which it takes its name, near Biarritz.
It is a film about constant motion, from a time when capturing motion in new ways on film could still be a kind of magic trick. But it is also about the motion of ideas, shape-shifting rhythmically between different devices. Sometimes it will show Ray’s sculptural artworks in his studio as they rotate or come to stop-motion life or split in double exposure. At other moments there are recognizable humans—Rose Wheeler, his patron’s wife, doing the Charleston, or commanding a car—or landscapes seen from experimental angles. Many times, it veers into pure abstraction, including waves of static Man Ray made by throwing salt and pepper on the film, or jumpy geometric outlines of nails and pins that seem to dance in silhouette on the surface—living photograms. It climaxes with the unforgettable image of Kiki de Montparnasse with cartoon eyes painted on her eyelids, blinking up at the camera with slow, deliberate mischief.
Man Ray, Rayograph (1922). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bluff Collection, Promised Gift of John A. Pritzker Photo by Ben Blackwell © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2025
It’s a relentless exercise in piling delight on delight, and an anthology of Man Ray’s themes: experiments with the material of film, sly society portraiture, numinous objects, dream worlds… Above all, with its strobing ideas, this odd film gives the sense that invention itself was more important to him than any individual invention. “Make it new” is the famous mantra of modern art. It certainly applies to Man Ray’s way of thinking. But it would be just as good to say, for him, “Make it flou.”
“Man Ray: When Objects Dream” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, September 14, 2025–February 1, 2026. More

The problem with making prescient art is that its relevance may only become apparent in hindsight. Time and again, this has proven the case for Lynn Hershman Leeson’s many experiments in new media since the ’60s. In 1984, she began her confessional “Electronic Diary” series with the musing that “we’ve become a society of screens, of different layers that keep us from knowing the truth.” Who could have guessed that her words would so grimly foreshadow an era when fake news runs rampant across a social media landscape composed mostly of people talking to screens?
Agent Ruby (1998-), the female A.I. chatbot who later evolved into DiNA (2004), taps into the great knowledge bank of the internet to answer any questions she is posed. Both bots were a critical flop when they debuted. Or, as Hersham Leeson put it to me: “No one knew what they were, they didn’t sell, no one wrote about them.” I won’t need to explain why they have recently received a sudden resurgence of interest.
For once, however, Hershman Leeson’s latest show—”About Time” at Altman Siegel in San Francisco—feels right on time. Or is that because, as ever, the artist offers a high-tech twist on an eternal theme? In this case: our battle with mortality.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Eternally Yours (2023). Photo courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegel, San Francisco.
The Effects of Time
The show, centered around the artist’s injectable anti-aging serum, would have seemed like sci-fi fantasy just a decade ago. Today, it feels like the logical next step for a culture that has already embraced Ozempic for weight loss and facial filler for smoothing away wrinkles. Both quick fixes have been held responsible for the increasing ubiquity of a standardized beauty ideal commonly known as “Instagram face.” The longer term drawbacks of such a Faustian bargain, as recently explored in body horror blockbuster The Substance (2024), remain a matter for speculation.
So, how has Hershman Leeson managed to do the impossible and serve up the elixir of eternal life? Since 2012, the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR has allowed for huge advancements in rewriting the DNA of living cells. So far, it has been banned for use on humans and can only be developed via experiments on lab rats. Working with long-time collaborator, Dr. Tomas Huber, Hershman Leeson has commissioned a private lab in China to create an illicit serum engineered to reverse aging. Her resulting new age sculpture, Eternally Yours (2023), features these syringes of serum stored at 38°F in a custom refrigerator. There are only three editions, and they come with an asking price of $100,000.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Home Companions (2025). Photo courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegel, San Francisco.
Hershman Leeson’s own complex feelings around this potent serum and the effects of time are explored in the latest video from her ongoing “Electronic Diaries” series, which was commissioned for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, currently on view through January 11, 2026. “When you’re younger, life gives you things,” she says. “It gives you a voice, it gives you the ability to move, to see, to discern, to have language. As you get older, things are taken away—your friends, then your movement, your vision, your ability to remember.”
“It’s a reverse way of learning how to manage with less,” she concludes but, despite the cruelty of this, she has decided that, ultimately, she would not chose to take the serum. “I realized that all of us live in our time, and that’s what time is about.”
Hershman Leeson’s radically confessional approach to analyzing the possibilities of new scientific developments foregrounds the question of how they might affect our psyches. That technology inevitably becomes tied up in identity, and the dystopic confusion that results, is further explored in “About Time” through a series of new digital prints on aluminum. In several, a monstrous woman’s silhouette is overlaid with neon strands of DNA or medical bottles that have an almost radioactive sheen. In Lynn as DNA (2025), one clinical vial contains a sepia tone portrait of the artist as a young girl, then the image of Shirley Temple-esque innocence.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lynn as DNA (2025). Photo courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegel, San Francisco.
Alongside these sinister, futuristic visions are more DIY-style collages, a medium Hershman Leeson has turned to since the early days of her practice. Reminiscent of feminist montages by British artist Linder, these cut up and embellished images pack a comical punch, as in Double Click (2020), when a woman appears transfixed by the blue birds that symbolize Twitter (now X).
“Life is about collage,” Hershman Leeson explained of her decision to return to this medium. “We collage time, energy, experience along with things we buy and co-exist with. Singular disciplines are extremely restrictive and deny the joy of merging unknowns together for a dynamically unknown result.”
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Double ClicK (2020). Photo courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegel, San Francisco.
The Art of Identity
Born in Cleveland in 1941, Hershman Leeson has lived in the Bay Area since the 1960s, when she moved there to pursue her MFA at San Francisco State University. Today, we might literally be able to alter our own DNA, but Hershman Leeson has long had an eye to various other ways in which we might reinvent or fictionalize our identity. These early projects also betray an audacious willingness to merge art and life, at times allowing the two to become nearly indistinguishable.
The most famous example is surely Roberta Breitmore. The performance art piece, which lasted most of the 1970s, saw Hershman Leeson create and, where necessary, become a blonde character who was brought to life as much by her distinctive beauty rituals as her bureaucratic records. As well as having particular mannerisms, Breitmore had her own bank account and even put ads in the local newspaper to rent a room. Her existence, over nearly a decade, raised the question of what qualifiers make anyone real. The conundrum lives on in 2025, with Breitmore inspiring the “Roberta Look Alike Contest” by Altman Siegel and di Rosa SF on October 4.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta’s Construction Chart #1 (1975). Image courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegel, San Francisco.
Hershman Leeson has described a long struggle to convince institutions to recognize her work as art. After all, it had no obvious precedent. It may be that work as daringly experimental as Hershman Leeson’s could only have been made outside the glare of the mainstream market, but now it is now time for her to receive her due. Today, most discourse—positive or negative—around technology in art centers on A.I., but Lynn Hershman Leeson seems to think that the bigger story is our ability to reprogram our genes. With her track record for prophesy, we should probably sit up and listen before it’s too late.
“Lynn Hershman Leeson: About Time” is on view at Altman Siegel, 1150 25th Street, San Francisco, California, through October 11. More

While the phrase “explore and discover” is used liberally across the art world, the unveiling of a slew of new art venues and events in Uzbekistan might be the closest the words come to not being trite in 2025. Uzbekistan officials and institutions seemed to have realized that, to date, the country isn’t front of mind to much of the rest of the world when considering art tourism. They’ve pulled together a comprehensive plan to change that.
A landlocked country in Central Asia, Uzbekistan is largely removed from other primary art world regions (though there is a direct flight from New York to its capital of Tashkent five times a week), but a recent flurry of activity within its arts and culture sectors has started to attract broader international attention. In the span of just a few years, Uzbekistan has moved from the periphery of the global art world to actively positioning itself as a new hub.
Through state-backed initiatives like the creation of the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Tashkent, the launch of the Bukhara Biennial, and a suite of youth and craft-focused programs, the country is simultaneously elevating its cultural heritage and investing in infrastructure for contemporary practice. The effort reflects an unusually coordinated, long-term plan: not only to draw international attention, but also to embed the arts more deeply into everyday Uzbek life.
The Mir-i-Arab Madrasa, Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Courtesy of Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation.
Spearheaded by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF)—a government organization helmed by Gayane Umerova and dedicated to fostering and promoting Uzbek culture both at home and abroad—the country has debuted a new biennial, the Bukhara Biennial, an artist residency, a contemporary art museum plans, and more. The multi-pronged approach to developing its presence on the global art stage as well as creating the infrastructure to sustainably support its own artists and craftspeople amounts to a total art-scene overhaul on a scale not regularly seen today.
What does it take to transform a country that has historically existed on the margins into an art world hub? Uzbekistan might just be providing an answer, and a roadmap.
Centre for Contemporary Arts in Tashkent (CCA) aerial view render. © Studio KO. Courtesy of Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation.
Tashkent Rising
As the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent is rife with new cultural initiatives. A city with about three million people, it is the most populous city in Central Asia. A former state in the Soviet Union, while the country declared its independence in 1991, Soviet Modernist architecture—notably the Tashkent Metro, the first in the region and built in 1977, which is still a point of civic pride—commingles with more traditional Uzbek structures like mosques and bazaars.
Chief among the slate of programming is the unveiling of the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), helmed by Artistic Director and Chief Curator Dr. Sara Raza. Housed in a former diesel station dating to 1912 that is being transformed by Studio KO, the site holds a symbolic resonance. Referencing medieval Islamic architecture and featuring traditional Uzbek brickwork, the building was originally designed by Wilhelm Heinzelmann, the architect behind several other Tashkent landmarks, and reflects the capital’s architectural heritage. Slated to open its doors in March of 2026, with the inaugural exhibition “Hikmah,” meaning “wisdom” in Uzbek, the center is positioning itself as a cross-disciplinary site of contemporary art, research, and community engagement—the first of its kind in Uzbekistan.
In October last year, the CCA welcomed its first class of artists in residence, a new program open to both Uzbek and international artists, designers, and researchers. This month, a new cohort joined the program, including shortlisted LVMH Prize fashion designer Paria Farzaneh and art historian Vivek Gupta.
Renovated brick façade of the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) Tashkent. © BCDF Studio. Courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation.
Looking Ahead
More than half of the population of Uzbekistan is under the age of 30, which explains the strong emphasis on fostering engagement with the arts among youths and young people. In a welcoming event to the artist residency, Raza noted, “All that we do is for this incoming generation, and creativity and art are central to that.”
Among these is an initiative launched by the CCA called Clubistan, a program made for and in part by youths aged 16 to 21, as well as a professional development program, both of which maintain a mission of paving the way for young people and early career professionals into careers in the cultural sector.
Beyond the CCA is the Republican Children’s Library, which reopened in 2023 after an expansive renovation saw the once humble library turn into a state-of-the-art cultural center and public space. The family-owned Rakhimov’s Ceramic Studio, which offers free ceramics classes to children ages 6–12, simultaneously teaches them the heritage craft and talent scouting for the next generation of Uzbek ceramicists, just one of a diverse range of traditional art forms the country is known for, including carpet and textile weaving, embroidery, lacquer miniature painting, metalwork, and more.
Antony Gormley in collaboration with Temur Jumaev, CLOSE (2024–2025). Photo: Adiren Dirand. Courtesy of Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation.
Bukhara Biennial
Though the art world calendar of biennials is overflowing, the Bukhara Biennial still manages to set a new precedent. Just over an hour flight or three and a half hour train ride southwest of Tashkent, it is one of the longest inhabited cities in the world, with first references to it dating back to the 6th century B.C.E., and has at various points served as the capital for various historical Uzbek states.
The historic center of Bukhara is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, once situated along the Silk Road and a key component to Uzbek national identity. The inaugural edition is led by American curator Diana Campbell, who is also the artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka, and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit. Campbell’s area of research and curatorial focus has historically been on South and Southeast Asian visual culture with an emphasis on cross-Asian exchange; now at the helm of the Bukhara Biennial, that dialogue is expanding even further.
With the title of “Recipes for Broken Hearts.” Inspired by a local legend in which Ibn Sina, also known in the west as Avicenna, who was an Islamic Golden Age philosopher and physician, concocted a palov recipe to treat a prince’s lovesickness for a craftsman’s daughter. Within the context of the biennial, Campbell positions art as a source of nourishment.
“‘Recipes for Broken Hearts’ aims to inspire us to be better companions to the many forms of life that we encounter on this planet and infuse us with the energy we need in these heartbreaking times,” Campbell said during an opening talk, “to imagine the possibility of a joyful world where everyone’s heart can feel lighter and everyone’s stomach can feel full. A biennial cannot heal all the heartbreaks in our world today, however … perhaps we need to reimagine biennials not as exhibitions and simply display art, but as vehicles that can actively contribute to creating the conditions where great art and great artists can flourish.”
Rather than simply draw up a roster of artists and curate a selection of extant work (perhaps accented by a few commissions), Campbell and the biennial team chose to leverage the historic city and the country’s rich craft traditions. Choosing not to cater exclusively to foreign interests, the biennial levels the hierarchy between local craft and international art, and between assumptions of how and where are should be displayed and sites of everyday life.
Marina Perez Simão in collaboration with Bakhtiyar Babamuradov, Untitled (2024–2025). Photo: Felix Odell. Courtesy of Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation.
The biennial is free and open to the public, and is woven into the fabric of the city itself, with the art on view installed across multiple sites and buildings; outside of a climate controlled gallery space, both the artists who made the pieces and the viewer have the understanding that the works will experience the same weathering as the the city while on view. To explore the Bukhara Biennial is to explore the medieval city itself. And the art included in the biennial is another homage to the rich craft traditions of Uzbekistan, being comprised entirely of new commissions, all work is made in collaboration between both national and international artists and local artisans.
Results from these collaborations include Close (2025), a sprawling installation produced by British sculptor Antony Gormley with local Uzbek brick maker Temur Jumaev; a monumental work ceramic tile work by Brazilian artist Marina Perez Simão and master Uzbek mosaicist Bakhtiyar Babamuradov; and tapping into the traditional Uzbek genre of puppetry, Bangladeshi artist Kamruzzaman Shadhin with master Uzbek metal engraver Jurabek Siddikov produced a series of life-scale puppets that regularly make outings across the biennial.
Entrance portal of Khoja Kalon and Kalon Minaret, Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Courtesy of Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation.
Art and Craft, Artist and Artisan
While Bukhara is one of the most visited sites on the historical Silk Road, and has been drawing record-breaking crowds of tourists, the biennial is hoping to draw more return visitors specifically. Campbell noted, “It was basically a mission: how do we get people in the country every two years and why? How can we keep them excited? This was a very logical cause to not just do a festival but a biennial, and to create masterpieces that can travel to the rest of the world as well, to share this collection.”
The hope behind repeat visitors is also an attempt at cultivating a deeper understanding of the country’s specific cultural heritage—like the legends behind the iconic Uzbek ikat fabric, or the difference between handmade and mass produced ceramics. The artistic director described her own experience with what she calls “an education in training your eye.” On her first visit she fell in love with plates that bore traditional Uzbek patterns. On subsequent visits, she realized those specific plates were made for tourists, which inclined her to learn more deeply about traditional crafts.
It also champions a line of thought that has long been wrestled with: the delineation between art and craft, artist and artisan. Across the recent developments in Tashkent and Bukhara, while the categorical differences are still present, the hierarchy is not. Artist and artisan are presented on equal footing, and contemporary art exists alongside traditional craft. At the same time, the Uzbek art scene at large isn’t leaving its cultural heritage behind or including it as an afterthought, but keeping it front and center beside and within the new institutions, initiatives, and projects.
Uzbekistan’s cultural wager is splashy, but it is also a carefully choreographed rewrite of how an art scene can take root. The country’s fusion of heritage and experimentation is neither imported nor imitative. As such, it is not waiting for recognition from the center but building a center of its own. More