Heartbreak & Halva – The Bukhara Issue
A recent round-up by Felicity Cloake of the best museum cafes in the UK in The Guardian prompted a lively discussion at Scott & Co-HQ about the relationship between art and food. It’s a subject close to our collective heart – not just as art-lovers who have helped launch restaurants like Toklas and Yinka Shonibare CBE RA’s reimagining of sketch, but as voracious eaters – and never more so than now, when our thoughts are turning to the first Bukhara Biennial, deliciously named Recipes for Broken Hearts.
International participants, including Antony Gormley, Delcy Morelos, Laila Gohar, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), and Carsten Höller, are partnering with local craftspeople to create new works intertwining longstanding traditions with contemporary practices, in what will be one of Central Asia’s largest contemporary art initiatives to date. Part of a long-term project for Bukhara under the leadership of Gayane Umerova, chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, the biennial will unfold across several newly restored historic sites, which will remain in community use between editions.
But gladly, it all comes back to food. The more than 2000-year-old city of Bukhara was an important stop on the Silk Road; a hub of production and intellectual exchange that manifests in its cuisine. Legend has it that the national dish, Plov – an abundant offering of spiced rice – was invented by Ibn Sina to cure the broken heart of a prince who could not marry the daughter of a craftsman, a story which has become a central theme of the Biennial’s first edition, as conceived by its Artistic Director Diana Campbell. It’s a beautiful theme, and not too difficult a stretch for the imagination – after all, if there are two foolproof remedies for pain, they are the mental stimulation of great art, and the comfort of refined carbohydrates.
The Digest People, Places & Ideas
Gayane Umerova discusses with Kin Woo several initiatives about to turn Uzbekistan into an art-world hotspot. (British Vogue)
Gisela Williams joined Diana Campbell, Jenia Kim (J.Kim), architect Wael Al Awar and Korean nun and chef Jeong Kwan for an Uzbek feast of branded pomegranates and pistachio halva for T Magazine. (T Magazine)
Laila Gohar will be bringing her signature food stylings to Bukhara in the autumn, but visitors to Salone del Mobile will have already had an opportunity to step into her universe. The Gohar World showroom was an ode to port cities and their significance for cultural exchange (not, it must be said, unlike a certain Silk Road city we know of).
Chris Fite-Wassilak takes a closer look at culinary experiences in the artworld, and what is lost and gained when food is recontextualised in the art gallery or institution. (ArtReview)
At last, the first forays into print by Vittles, the much-loved newsletter turned magazine founded by Jonathan Nunn. For five years they have been at the forefront of exploring food’s intersection with politics, art, culture, family, and more, so this is an exciting addition to the print landscape. Issue 1 hit newsstands in May, and it’s all killer, no filler.
On the TBR pile, Alayo Akinkugbe’s Reframing Blackness: What’s Black about ‘History of Art’?. Set to offer a timely, critical, and accessible conversation about race, culture, and education, inviting us to rethink the history we’ve been taught. (Merky Books, coming July 2025)
And, last but certainly not least, Scott & Co’s own (!) Elise Bell’s An Opinionated Guide to Erotic Art is a playful journey through the history of eroticism in art, challenging taboos and celebrating sensuality across cultures and centuries. (Hoxton Mini Press)
Agenda Spring Dates for your Diary
7–11 May Frieze New York, USA
8 May–29 June Martin Creed, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT, Camden Arts Projects, London, UK
8 May Becoming Ocean: a social conversation about the Ocean, organised as part of the United Nations Conference on the Oceans (UNOC3), Villa Arson, Nice, France
10 May Venice Architecture Biennale, Italy
12–14 May Art For Tomorrow, Milan, Italy
16–25 May Kira Muratova: Scenographies of Chaos, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, USA
22 May Modupeola Fadugba, Of Movement, Materials and Methods, Gallery 1957, London, UK
30 May Wilhelm Sasnal & Tomoo Gokita, Blum, Los Angeles, USA
31 May V&A East Storehouse Opening, London, UK
Until 15 September Paula Rego & Adriana Varejão, CAM Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal
Until 21 September Asunción Molinos Gordo, The Peasant, the Scholar and the Engineer, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, UAE
Until 2 November TBA21—Academy, otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua, Ocean Space, Venice, Italy