Saule Suleimenova in collaboration with Shiru Shakar Uzbekistan
Kutadgu Bilig, 2024-2025 for Bukhara Biennale
commissioned by ACDF Uzbekistan
photo courtesy of Andrey Arekelyan and ACDF Uzbekistan
This project explores women’s creative expression within Central Asian society, focusing on both the roles imposed upon them and the roles they actually inhabit. The series of works, crafted on polyethylene bags collected from the people of Bukhara, transforms into a floating, translucent stage that celebrates the joy of performance. It is created in collaboration with a group of retired performers in Bukhara from the Shiru Shakar folk ensemble, who actively resist the marginalisation often experienced by elderly women. Their singing and dancing resonate deeply with the understanding of ancient traditions and rituals, opening a quiet dialogue across generations – between the gestures of Shiru Shakar and the formalised movements of Kazakh girls shaped by staged folklore. The title of the work, which translates to ‘the wisdom that brings happiness’, carries layered meanings, resonating with the intricate cultural weave of Bukhara itself – a place of knots, crossings, and continuities. The project will come to life through live performances throughout the biennial. In the words of the artist: ‘We untie Bukhara’s ancient knots through ourselves – through dance and plastic, memory and tradition, shaped by love, pain, and sacrifice.’
How can we untie a knot, understand, and embrace the millennia-old layers of Bukhara’s traditions? Perhaps through oneself. Through layers of plastic that unite us all.
I am a little nameless Kazakh girl dancing beside the wise Bukhara apashkas. I learn from their every gesture, healing my heartache through the dance.
The dance of the Shiru Shakar ensemble is a marker of life cycles, and plastic is a means of preserving memory and passing down knowledge.
I ask,
How long can I walk with clenched teeth?
I do not protest,
I do not complain,
I am simply wondering.
And someone inside me answers:
A hundred years,
A thousand years,
Ten thousand years.
Didn’t you know?
This is what holds the earth together—
Love,
Pain,
Sacrifice.
The whole beauty of the world
Stands upon this
saule suleimenova 