Taking The Aural Sea, the 2026 exhibition at the Uzbekistan National Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, and Zulfiya Spowart’s presented work Beshik (The Cradle) as a starting point, this conversation will explore Spowart’s experience and practice as a participating artist – the exhibitions, conversations and knowledge systems which shaped her work. 

Drawing on research into the Central Asian Pavilion (2005–2013) – which brought together artists from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and, from 2009, Tajikistan – Maria Redaelli will bring a longer institutional history alongside Spowart’s account, tracing how the region has staged itself at Venice over time, and how transitioning towards separate National Pavilions has reconfigured how Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage is presented on the global exhibition stage.

Together, Redaelli and Spowart will reflect on the experience of presenting work within the institutional and symbolic framework of a National Pavilion in Venice: how this context shapes the making, display and reception of an artwork; how questions of cultural heritage and national representation emerge around an artist’s practice; and how artistic work can engage with, complicate or move beyond the narratives that such frameworks may produce.

Image: Beshik (The Cradle), Zulfiya Spowart (2026), presented at The Aural Sea, the Uzbekistan Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the artist and the Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) 

Zulfiya Spowart (b. 1991, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) is a multidisciplinary artist based in London. She is a participating artist in The Aural Sea, the Uzbekistan Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale (2026). She holds a BA in Mural Art from the National Institute of Art and Design named after Kamoliddin Behzod. Working across textiles, wood, mild steel, sculpture and installation, Spowart builds material environments through processes of stitching, layering, carving and assembly. Using recycled and previously used materials that retain traces of touch, labour and repair, she treats materiality as a register of embodied experience, repetition and transmission. Her practice explores care as a system that operates across domestic, institutional and social structures, encompassing motherhood, childcare, ageing, illness and forms of bodily regulation. Through these interconnected conditions, she examines how everyday acts of support, maintenance and discipline shape lived experience while often remaining outside public visibility. Drawing on Central Asian material cultures as systems of knowledge rather than vernacular forms, her work foregrounds the relationship between function, gesture and collective memory.

Recent presentations include Elly-Belly (London, UK, 2024), Maisons (Galerie de l’Est, Compiène, France 2026), Theatre on Memory (Lohuti Theatre, Dushanbe, Tajikistan 2026), the Silk Road Pavilion at the London Design Biennale, Surface Reflections (Somerset House, 2025) and  In/Visible: The Changing Shape of Womanhood (Galerie de l’Est, Compiène, France, 2024). In 2025, She was an artist in residence at Art’otel Hoxton, London. Her works are held in the permanent collections: Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art (Samarkand, Uzbekistan), Fora Gallery (Geneva, Switzerland), Regeneration Gallery (Tashkent, Uzbekistan) and other private collections.

Upcoming exhibitions include: What Remains Within (Annely Juda Fine Art, London, UK, 1 October–7 November 2026, ), Group Show (The Arc Space, 13 Tottenham Mews, October–November, London, UK), Solo Show (Mothering Spaces, Cavan, Ireland 8 April–20 May,
2027)

Maria Redaelli (PhD in History of Arts, 2022) conducts research on museum practices, exhibition-making, and the re-contextualisation of Soviet and Central Asian visual cultures. Her work investigates how exhibitions and museum displays contribute to the reinterpretation of cultural heritage and the negotiation of regional and national identities in contemporary Central Asia. As a curator, she has collaborated on international exhibitions and museum projects, including Uzbekistan: Avant-Garde in the Desert (Venice–Florence, 2024), and the development and production of new permanent displays at the State Museum of Arts of Karakalpakstan in Nukus (2024–2025) and the Bukhara Museum of Fine Arts (2025). She has also contributed to the development of exhibitions, public engagement programmes, and research initiatives in Venice, including in her role as Subject Lead in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University and as Lecturer on Contemporary Exhibition Practices in the Countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus in the Summer School in Contemporary Art and Curatorship.

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