/Frames and Borders: Beyond the Binary Frameworks of “Tradition Versus High Art”
author: Zulfiya Spowart
cover: Bobur Alimkhojaev
cover: Bobur Alimkhojaev
ODRA finishes publication of the the results of the open call in which we invited critics, curators, and art historians from Central Asia to share their thoughts and research on the regional contemporary art. This essay is written by Zulfiya Spowart, artist from Uzbekistan, exploring the interaction between textile and wood as carriers of familial and sensory memory.
Frames are constructed, and borders are blurred. My practice is grounded in a continual investigation of these thresholds: the moment I attempt to fix them, space loses its vital tension, the magic of life and love dissipates, and everything congeals into a cold, concrete cube. By “borders,” I do not mean lines on a map, but a mode of perceiving reality — one in which embodied knowledge operates as a conduit between the personal and the public. I position myself as a mediator: not in pursuit of harmony or order, but in the destabilization of established roles and materials, at the point where familiar meanings fracture and become open to reconsideration.
Frames are constructed, and borders are blurred. My practice is grounded in a continual investigation of these thresholds: the moment I attempt to fix them, space loses its vital tension, the magic of life and love dissipates, and everything congeals into a cold, concrete cube. By “borders,” I do not mean lines on a map, but a mode of perceiving reality — one in which embodied knowledge operates as a conduit between the personal and the public. I position myself as a mediator: not in pursuit of harmony or order, but in the destabilization of established roles and materials, at the point where familiar meanings fracture and become open to reconsideration.
Tashkent, Bobur Alimkhojaev
The urban space of Tashkent serves as a key reference. It is among the world’s most eclectic cities, where Islamic architectural legacies intertwine with Soviet modernism, post-Soviet transformations, and the contemporary imagery of global gloss.
While modernism privileges purity of form, local craft introduces rhythms of variation and unpredictability. Their intersection produces a nonlinear, stratified contemporaneity — shimmering and multiple, much like the identities of the region’s inhabitants.
While modernism privileges purity of form, local craft introduces rhythms of variation and unpredictability. Their intersection produces a nonlinear, stratified contemporaneity — shimmering and multiple, much like the identities of the region’s inhabitants.
Tashkent, Bobur Alimkhojaev
My engagement with craft and architecture as two “bodies” of material memory leads to a central research question: how do the material practices of Central Asia generate their own forms of contemporaneity, beyond the binary frameworks of “tradition versus high art” or “heritage versus loss”?
Zulfiya Spowart, House 45, cotton, wood
Craft does not become art through museum display alone, but through dialogue with bodies, spaces, and lived practices—when a craftswoman alters a pattern and becomes a co-author of urban form, or when residents adapt a modernist building and assume authorship over architecture.
Within my personal practice, I explore the interaction between textile and wood as carriers of familial and sensory memory. I learned to work with fabric by observing my mother sewing and embroidering, and this embodied knowledge is woven into my work. One of my early pieces is a tapestry in which delicate fields of color coexist with dark squares and ruffled elements.
Initially, I perceived the ruffles as a compositional failure; later, I came to understand them as traces of domestic craft—a bodily, intimate presence inseparable from artistic form. This shift revealed how cognitive constraints can limit our perception of matter’s fullness. When material returns to the body, it ceases to function as an archive — it becomes alive.
Within my personal practice, I explore the interaction between textile and wood as carriers of familial and sensory memory. I learned to work with fabric by observing my mother sewing and embroidering, and this embodied knowledge is woven into my work. One of my early pieces is a tapestry in which delicate fields of color coexist with dark squares and ruffled elements.
Initially, I perceived the ruffles as a compositional failure; later, I came to understand them as traces of domestic craft—a bodily, intimate presence inseparable from artistic form. This shift revealed how cognitive constraints can limit our perception of matter’s fullness. When material returns to the body, it ceases to function as an archive — it becomes alive.
Zulfiya Spowart (b. 1991, Uzbekistan) lives and works in London, UK. Her formal education in monumental painting laid the foundation for her artistic identity. Rooted in the reinterpretation of mural techniques, her multidisciplinary practice unfolds primarily in textile-based and woodcarving practices but also extends into watercolor and digital art.
Read more