The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) has announced the appointment of Sara Raza as the Artistic Director and Chief Curator of the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Tashkent, set to open in September 2025. Raza, a globally recognised curator, writer, and educator, will shape the Centre’s curatorial vision, fostering artistic exchange while deepening engagement with Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage. With over two decades of experience across Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, Raza, who is of Iranian and Central Asian origin and part of the international diaspora, has held key curatorial roles at institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Rubin Museum of Art.
The CCA, housed in the former 1912 diesel station and tram depot and currently undergoing a major renovation with the involvement of French architectural firm Studio KO, aims to become a dynamic cultural hub, supporting artists through residencies, exhibitions, and educational programs. The Centre’s residencies—held in the historic mahallas of Namuna and Khast Imom—will provide a space for local and international creatives to engage with Uzbekistan’s artistic traditions. An international selection committee will oversee applications. The programme fosters artistic exchange and innovation, positioning Tashkent as a global cultural hub. As the CCA prepares to open in 2025, the residencies mark a key step in developing a dynamic contemporary art ecosystem in Uzbekistan.
Raza’s leadership is set to elevate Uzbekistan’s presence in international artistic dialogues while celebrating the nation’s profound cultural legacy. In the interview below Sara Raza answers some of our questions.
In Conversation with Sara Raza Artistic Director and Chief Curator Centre for Contemporary Art in Tashkent
What is your overarching vision for what you plan to bring to the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) curatorial program?
My artistic vision for the CCA’s forthcoming curatorial program centres on intergenerational modern and contemporary artists in dialogue with Uzbekistan’s rich visual cultural, intellectual, and literary histories. This includes fine arts, crafts, cinema and extends to ancient and modern archaeological heritage composed of artefacts, monuments, and buildings, as well as the thinking sciences, philosophy and poetry and other forms of literature. Throughout various historical periods, Uzbekistan has intersected and collaborated with artists, filmmakers, and thinkers from Africa (and African American diaspora) Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and of course the USSR and other CIS countries. I intend to draw upon and revive some of these connections in unexpected and dynamic ways.
How do you envision the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Tashkent contributing to the global dialogue on contemporary art while staying rooted in Uzbekistan’s rich cultural heritage?
Uzbekistan has a unique global dialogue with the majority of the global world. Fascinating examples in the 20th century have included exchange with African American poets and intellectuals such as poet laureate Langston Hughes who visited Uzbekistan in the 1930s and author and political activist Angela Davis in the 1970s. Tashkent also hosted a longstanding film festival that was initiated in the 1960s which ran until the 80s and included films from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I want to build upon the historical connections that took place in Uzbekistan that prefaced a conversation with the global majority world and establish fresh dialogues with today’s artists, creatives, and thinkers.
in Tashkent, 2024.
Your curatorial practice often bridges diverse regions and disciplines. How will this experience shape the programming at CCA, particularly in fostering collaborations between local and international artists?
As a publicly recognised contemporary art curator, I have made a significant contribution to non-Euro-American-centric curatorial knowledge, working in both diasporic and international contexts through exhibition-making, collecting practices, publishing, and education (public programming and university teaching). My diverse experiences as a global curator who has lived and worked across diverse cultural topographies and geographies spanning Asia, Europe, and North America have often involved complex forms of interlocution, dialogue, and most importantly shared and reciprocal cultural labour with artists. I hope to continue to build upon this in my current role, which truly allows me to create a program that is informed by various theories and methodologies related to postcolonial and post-Soviet visual cultures and geographies, as well as drawing upon rebellious thought and activity in curatorial practice, as explored in my book “Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion” (2022). I am truly grateful to the Uzbekistan Art & Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) Chairperson Gayane Umerova for believing in my vision and for inviting me to be part of Uzbekistan’s present and future cultural journey, allowing me to contribute to the visual cultural dialogue in a part of the world that is part of my heritage which is of Iranian and Central Asian origin. This is most definitely the most important professional role in my curatorial career thus far, in that it is so personally significant.