HIKMAH
Curated by CCA Tashkent Artistic Director Dr Sara Raza, the inaugural group exhibition, Hikmah, brings together leading voices from across the globe, exploring ideas of wisdom, spirit, and material transformation through powerful new commissions and celebrated works.
Exhibition
06 September 2026 — 31 January 2027
CCA Tashkent's inaugural exhibition
Hikmah is the Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent (CCA Tashkent)
inaugural exhibition, rooted in the concept of wisdom as it relates to
material intelligence and higher levels of consciousness. The
exhibition also draws upon the building’s layered past, first as an
Imperial-era structure, then as a Soviet-era tram depot and diesel
station, offering a space of movement and holding a very particular
architectural memory. Reimagined by Studio KO, the building has
been sensitively restored using vernacular methods and materials,
crafts, and design from across Uzbekistan, weaving together the
country’s diverse geographies and cultural vocabularies.
Curatorially, Hikmah can be reframed as an exhibition “method” for understanding the open-ended relationship between art, material intelligence, and architecture.
Site-specific works and new commissions
Exploring ideas around insight, intelligence, and divine wisdom, the exhibition features new commissions by Muhannad Shono, Nari Ward, Shokhrukh Rakhimov and Tarik Kiswanson. The exhibition also includes a loaned work by Nadia Kaabi-Linke from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, a participatory work by Kimsooja and works from the Savitsky Museum in Nukus by Vladimir Pan, Daribay Saipov, and Bakhtiyar Saipov.
Curatorially, Hikmah can be reframed as an exhibition “method” for understanding the open-ended relationship between art, material intelligence, and architecture. This represents a way of thinking about exhibition-making within the architectural context of the Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent (CCA Tashkent), which has multiple ideologies and principles, in its current adaptive redesign as a space for contemporary arts and ideas.
In this context, Hikmah subverts architectural ideologies through abstract thought and embodied wisdom, where the artist’s hands serve as a decisive tool.
In this sense, the definition of hikmah extends beyond the theory of knowledge to encompass a haptic exploration of the relationship between art and material intelligence, experienced across a wide spectrum.
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