Heritage in Motion: Exploring Uzbekistan’s Cultural Legacy

Q. What story did you want Uzbekistan: Heritage in Motionto tell about Uzbekistan’s heritage?

Anastasiya Silkatcheva: The central idea behind the exhibition was to present Uzbekistan’s heritage not simply as something preserved from the past, but as a living legacy that continues to shape the country’s cultural identity today and into the future. We often think of heritage in terms of historical monuments, objects, and traditions that have survived unchanged over centuries. My goal was to show that heritage continues to shape identity as successive generations adapt, reinterpret and give it new meanings. This is how it endures.

Uzbekistan offers a particularly compelling opportunity to explore this idea. Its history encompasses ancient Central Asian kingdoms, the arrival and development of Islam, the great intellectual and artistic achievements of the Medieval period, and the emergence of modern cultural practices. These are not isolated chapters; they are interconnected histories whose influences remain visible in the country today.

Throughout the exhibition, we trace these connections through architecture, scholarship, artistic production and craft traditions. In the groups of objects we present, and in many cases even in individual objects themselves, visitors can see how a preserved moment looks both backwards and forwards in time.

Ultimately, I wanted visitors to leave with an understanding that Uzbekistan is much more than its celebrated Silk Road cities and historical monuments. Its heritage remains a vibrant part of contemporary life, and the exhibition’s subtitle, Heritage in Motion, captures precisely this idea of continuity through change.

Q. How has Uzbekistan’s cultural identity evolved from the eve of the Islamic conquest to the present day, and how does the exhibition portray this?

Silkatcheva: Uzbekistan is a modern country whose borders encompass the territories of several ancient and medieval civilisations, each of which contributed to the region’s rich and complex cultural history. The cultural identity of Uzbekistan today has been formed through this accumulated inheritance, shaped by successive historical transformations, cultural encounters and the reinterpretation of earlier traditions.

The exhibition opens with a remarkable fragment of a seventh-century wall painting from Afrasiab, ancient Samarqand, depicting ambassadors arriving at the court of the Sogdian king Varkhuman. It provides a glimpse of the sophisticated political and cultural world of Central Asia on the eve of the Islamic conquest. The painting also reveals the region’s connections with neighbouring cultures, visible in details such as the Sasanian royal motifs on the clothing.

The arrival of Islam brought profound religious, intellectual and artistic transformations. A folio of the Katta Langar Qur’an, dating to the eighth century, allows us to consider the early history of Islam in the region, while the exhibition’s presentation of scholars and thinkers demonstrates the extraordinary intellectual contributions made by people from this region to the wider Islamic world and beyond.

Over subsequent centuries, these influences became embedded in distinctive architectural, artistic and craft traditions. Yet the exhibition also shows that cultural identity did not stop evolving in the Medieval period. Architectural practices continued to be transmitted, traditional textiles acquired new uses, and established artistic forms found new expressions.

By bringing historical objects into dialogue with contemporary architecture, ceramics, fashion and textile production, we show how Uzbekistan’s cultural identity has been continually shaped by both inheritance and innovation. It is this capacity to incorporate new influences while maintaining meaningful connections with the past that makes its heritage so compelling.

Q. The exhibition is organised around four themes. How do these themes come together to tell a broader story of Uzbekistan’s history, culture and identity?

Silkatcheva: The themes are intended to illuminate different but interconnected dimensions of Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage. Together, they explore the built environment, the intellectual legacy of scholars and artists, and the craft traditions through which cultural knowledge and identity are transmitted across generations.

Our introductory theme, Beyond the River, establishes the lands within Uzbekistan’s borders as a cosmopolitan crossroads, shaped by the movement of peoples, ideas, beliefs and goods across Central Asia and beyond. Rather than treating the region as an isolated geographical entity, we introduce visitors to a complex cultural landscape in which different civilisations and traditions encountered one another, leaving legacies that continue to inform the region today.

The three subsequent themes explore different dimensions of this historical inheritance. In Cities of the Earth, we examine architecture as a record of cultural and historical change. Buildings reveal how artistic ideas, technical knowledge and architectural principles have developed over time, while continuing to influence the ways people build and inhabit spaces today. In Uzbekistan, we see this most interestingly in the continuation of Islamic architectural principles in Modernist buildings of the later 20th century.

Architects of Thought and Image turns to the region’s intellectual and artistic contributions. We explore the achievements of historical scholars and thinkers and demonstrate their continuing relevance through contemporary applications of their work, as seen in our fantastic interactive experience. In addition, the tradition of manuscript illumination is represented not only through historical works of the 16th century but also through the contemporary miniatures of Davlat Toshev of Bukhara, who passes on this tradition through his school for children.

Legacies of Clay and Thread focuses on material culture and the transmission of practical knowledge. Ceramics, textiles, clothing and silk production reveal how traditional techniques and aesthetic principles have endured, while also being reinterpreted to meet changing needs and tastes. We show how the ceramic tradition has continued from the 10th century CE until modern production in the workshops of Rishtan. We reveal how traditional garments have maintained the same form for centuries but are being refashioned with different materials by modern designers such as Madina Kasimbaeva, who has revived the Tashkent school of suzani embroidery. We present the story of silk production and weaving from its ancient origins in China to the modern factories in Margilan where this luxurious fabric is still made by hand.

The important point is that these are not separate stories. Architecture, intellectual life and craft production all reveal how communities preserve knowledge, express their values and negotiate change. The exhibition’s broader narrative emerges from the connections between them: the identity of Uzbekistan and its people has been shaped by centuries of cultural exchange and innovation, and its historical traditions continue to inform the country’s contemporary life.

Q. What can Uzbekistan’s buildings and architectural traditions tell us about the relationship between heritage, innovation and identity?

Silkatcheva: Architecture is particularly revealing because it makes continuity visible in the environments we inhabit. Buildings may survive for centuries, and the knowledge, techniques and design principles behind them also survive through the people who study, maintain and reproduce them.

One of my favourite examples in the exhibition is one of the so-called ‘Tashkent scrolls’, dating to the 16th century CE. It contains plans and decorative designs associated with buildings of the Timurid period of earlier centuries, suggesting a strong continuity in architectural practice. Research has shown that similar scrolls continued to be used by Uzbek master architects even into the 20th century. It is a wonderful illustration of how architectural knowledge can be transmitted across generations, sometimes through working methods that are remarkably durable.

At the same time, continuity does not mean that architecture remains unchanged. At the end of this section, we see how architectural principles from the Medieval period have been implemented into Modernist design of the 20th century in Tashkent. At first glance, these public buildings and spaces seem to present something wholly new and different, but looking closer we can see that their architects deliberately included traditional Islamic devices, such as the muqarnas vaulting of the Mustakillik Square metro station, as a representation of an historical Central Asian identity. This demonstrates how inherited forms and ideas can be reinterpreted in response to new materials, technologies and aesthetic ambitions.

Conservation is another important part of this relationship. Our presentation of restoration work at the Bibi Khanym Mosque in Samarqand, sponsored by the Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD), highlights the practical processes through which historical buildings are preserved for future generations. Such work protects architectural heritage while also creating opportunities for contemporary craftspeople and local communities, continuing the relevance and value of heritage into the future.

For me, the key point is that architecture is not simply a reminder of what a society once achieved. It is an ongoing cultural practice through which knowledge is transmitted, identities are expressed and new possibilities are developed. Uzbekistan’s architectural traditions demonstrate that heritage and innovation are not opposites: each can sustain and enrich the other.

Q. The exhibition highlights influential scholars, poets and thinkers from the region, alongside manuscripts and works of art. Which figures do you think audiences should know more about, and why are their contributions still relevant today?

Silkatcheva: In Architects of Thought and Image we display manuscripts of several scholars who originated from or spent their lives in the lands now within Uzbekistan’s borders. These works are later copies of earlier texts, made long after the passing of their authors and sometimes transcribed far away from Central Asia, in some cases even outside the Islamic world. Through contemporary photographs we show how these individuals are remembered in modern statues across Uzbekistan’s cities. These are testaments to the enduring relevance of this rich intellectual legacy. We highlight a few of these figures in an excellent interactive experience that introduces visitors to their main achievements and reveals a modern echo of their work in objects that we continue to use in our contemporary world.

I would particularly encourage visitors to learn more about al-Khwarizmi and Ibn Sina, two figures whose contributions extend far beyond the historical world in which they lived. What connects these figures is the continuing relevance of their work. Their achievements remind us that the history of knowledge is a history of exchange, translation and adaptation, in which ideas developed in one place can transform intellectual and practical life elsewhere. Recognising Uzbekistan’s contribution to that history gives us a richer understanding of the interconnected world we live in today.

Q. Could you choose a few objects from the exhibition that are particularly meaningful to you? What do these objects reveal about Uzbekistan’s history and culture, and why did you feel it was important to include them?

Silkatcheva: There are several objects in the exhibition that I feel particularly strongly about but two examples stand out to me in particular: a cenotaph from Khiva, which connects us to lasting traditions of emotional expression, and a group of traditional garments that reveals how cultural exchange and historical change become woven into everyday life.

The object that holds the most meaning for me is the cenotaph which we display in a space that evokes the atmosphere of a Timurid-period mausoleum. Research by former MIA curatorial fellow, Dr Mohammad Farsimadan, revealed that its tiles had been removed and reassembled in an incorrect order before entering the museum’s collection. When Dr Mohammad reconstructed the inscription along the tiles, it became possible to read the Persian text. It contained many lines of mourning poetry, expressing the profound grief of someone left behind after the death of a beloved: In springtime, the nightingale sang sweet and clear; flowers bloomed, but your lips stayed sealed, my dear. How much sorrow must I bear without you near? What makes this discovery especially moving is that some of these poems and others like them continue to be recited and inscribed in funerary contexts in Central Asia today. Here, an object becomes a point of connection between historical artistic production and living emotional and cultural practices.

In our final section, a large group of objects is particularly special to me: our richly colourful assemblage of traditional garments, especially robes of the kind called chapan. The common thread through these is a fascinating story of cultural exchange and adaptation. The outer material, of silk or a silk and cotton blend, is decorated with traditional woven designs in the ikat style of Uzbekistan, but the inner lining looks quite different, with printed motifs of an entirely different character.

In the late 19th-century, Russian rule over Central Asia pushed textile makers into factories to process the cotton monoculture that had been planted across large areas of the region, especially Uzbekistan. The lengths of processed cotton were sent to factories in Russia to be printed with Russian designs, and the finished printed material was then imported back into the markets of Central Asia, where they were bought by local people and incorporated into traditional garments. For me, these garments beautifully encapsulate the idea of “heritage in motion”: they embody a complex history of political and economic change, cross-cultural exchange and local adaptation, all woven together in objects that became part of everyday life.

I chose these objects because they demonstrate two different but equally compelling ways in which heritage remains alive. Both remind us that objects are more than material witnesses to the past: they carry meanings, memories and practices that successive generations continue to reinterpret. For me, this is what makes Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage so exciting, and this is what we hope visitors will take away from the exhibition.

Vrinda Abilash is a Digital Editorial Coordinator at Qatar Museums.

Plan your visit to Uzbekistan: Heritage in Motion, open until 28 November 2026.