How can we understand the relationship between craft and wonder?
Join us for an evening of conversation between artist Aziza Kadyri and art historian Dr Vivek Gupta.
Aziza Kadyri’s multimedia practice covers vast geographies and material cultures as she weaves suzani embroideries with artificial intelligence. She draws on craft knowledge from Central Asia where material, book, and ritual cultures were interconnected through a desire to explore and create.
Dr Vivek Gupta, an expert on concepts of ‘wonder’ in Persianate and Islamic cultures, finds powerful analogues to Kadyri’s practice in premodern art histories.
In conversation, they will dissect the categories of old and new, craft and technology, and knowledge and intuition, to shed light on the futures elicited by Kadyri’s practice.
Kadyri’s solo exhibition Spinning Tales at Pushkin House in London, curated by Denis Maksimov, is open to the public until 19 January 2025. She was an UK Associate at Delfina Foundation from January to June 2024.
Biographies
Aziza Kadyri
Aziza Kadyri is a multidisciplinary artist focusing on experimental costumes, textiles, performance practices and immersive technology. She graduated with an MA in Performance Design & Practice from Central Saint Martins, London, in 2020. Kadyri’s approach is grounded in a fusion of collaboration and interdisciplinary methodologies that drive the creation of physical and digital immersive experiences. She is also interested in participatory practices with local communities. Her projects explore the themes of migration, displacement, social invisibility, identity, decolonisation, feminism and language. Aziza is the co-founder and coordinator of Qizlar, a grassroots feminist collective based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Kadyri represented Uzbekistan at the 60th Venice Biennale Arte with the project Don’t Miss the Cue in the Arsenale.
Dr Vivek Gupta
Vivek Gupta (PhD, London) is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at University College London. His first book, Worldshaping Wonders: Books and Visual Knowledge in Hindustan is under contract with Oxford University Press in the British Academy Monographs Series. His second project, Manuscript as Monument, focuses on the relationship between bodies, calligraphy, and ornament across media in the Bahmani Deccan. He is also co-curating Hindustani Airs: Songs Between Empires at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, with Senior Curator, Suzanne Reynolds.
This event is organised in partnership with Pushkin House.
FREE
