Aziza Kadyri on,
Identity, Craft from Central Asia, Suzani Embroidery as a Visual Language,
Fusing Art and AI,
Storytelling, Collective Memory,
Women's Voices and Qizlar Collective
Aziza Kadyri
Embroidery, textiles, colour, heritage, performance art, technology—AI (artificial intelligence), extended reality (AR/VR), and highlighting contemporary notions, all embody artist Aziza Kadyri’s art and work.
With Kadyri’s roots hailing from Uzbekistan, a degree in Fashion Design from Tsinghua University, Beijing, an MA in Performance Practice and Design with Distinction from Central Saint Martins in London, and producing designs for theatre, live performance, film, and XR projects— studying and working in China, Russia and the UK, Kadyri captures all these experiences, relaying through the artist’s work and through both the tool of art and technology, notions on migration, memory, feminism, family stories, identity, storytelling, exploring what is home, decolonising the arts and craft from Central Asia, showcasing the essence of its art, speaking about contemporary issues Uzbekistan and women face, and highlighting embroidery, textiles as not just a commodity but a mechanism to come together and bring out these important issues.
Kadyri is also the co-founder and coordinator of Qizlar Collective (Qizlar meaning girls in the Uzbek language), a feminist grassroots community group based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan with a mission to develop and intensify the visibility of art created by women.
After being invited to represent Uzbekistan in 2024 for the National Pavilion of the Republic of Uzbekistan at the Venice Biennale of Art, Aziza Kadyri chose to showcase work together with Qizlar collective, with the intent that the Pavilion reflect on a diverse and a variety of women’s voices.
‘Don’t Miss the Cue’ is a large scale immersive installation made up of,—the recreation of the backstage of a theatre, a stage, sculptural pieces, fabrics, textiles, screens, motifs, cameras and audio sounds, with a combination of shared experiences. The installation at the Biennale explored belonging, identity and migration, women’s narratives of past and present intertwining together through the art.
The intersection of heritage, art, embroidery and technology is applied in Kadyri’s work and projects. AI is utilised by the artist to reinterpret traditional embroidery into a contemporary perspective of Central Asia, exploring its transformation and impact on identity and on both personal and collective memory.
In Kadyri’s works ‘Project Nine Moons’ and ‘AI Suzani series-Self-exoticisation Archives’, Suzani embroidery— a traditional handmade embroidery from Central Asia is applied to AI. The artist’s family stories and women’s voices are brought to the forefront in ‘Project Nine Moons’. ‘AI Suzani series-Self-exoticisation Archives’ examines exoticisation and commodification, delving into AI reinterpreting the artist’s portrait, with Kadyri examining the biases that exist in AI and that impact on memory and representation.
Aziza Kadyri’s art feels and is both bathed in heritage and contemporary stances, captivating, engaging, as both past and present meet at a crossroad, they merge, craft brought into the contemporary fold with the tool of AI questioning and looking at technology’s impact on memories, exploring how by reviving storytelling with art and AI, collective memories can be shaped and unwritten stories, women’s voices can be amplified. A meaningful body of work reflecting important notions that affect contemporary Uzbekistan, created with passion for the arts, empowering women’s narratives, respecting heritage, with Kadyri viewing Suzani embroidery as a visual language, a way for women to share their stories and thoughts, as well as come together in a group and hold conversations.
Our own conversation covered the impact of Suzani embroidery, of AI, disrupting biases, the important issues Aziza Kadyri’s work explores, and on the artist’s path into the creative industries...
Can you tell us about your journey, the different cities you have lived in, your ties to your heritage, the varied influences on your work, and what drew you to the arts—textiles, craft, embroidery, performance, theatre.
Where do I start—I am the only artist in my family including in my extended family.
Growing up, my external objective was around me; coming from a family that lived in what is today the former Soviet Union, it was a specific environment where people had a solid job, and I had to have one too.
Despite that, I was encouraged as a young child to be creative, to draw and to work in textiles— which I did when I was in middle school such as make Batik, and my parents also placed me in music school for a while, until I gave up because I wasn’t fond of the teacher— but I do regret now not finishing my piano classes.
So there was a lot of encouragement in that, however, when it came to pursuing a specific university degree, I was always guided towards a particular path which seemed to them like the right path, advising me to get a job "that actually pays" and that "I can always do art as a hobby". It’s a tale as old as time, something a lot of people have been told; it didn't come from a malicious place, nobody in my family was an artist, so they didn’t actually know how it all works, how an artist can support themselves. And regardless of that, they were supportive.
You moved to several cities in your childhood, and also since then?
Yes, I was born in Moscow and a few months after that we moved for a while to Tashkent, Uzbekistan and then to Taipei, Taiwan, where I stayed until I was six due to my dad‘s job. Following that we moved back to Moscow where I attended primary and secondary school, and then I travelled to China for university.
That was one of the big changes in my life because initially I was accepted into a university in Moscow which would have led to a different profession, more towards the path my family were referring to, but through kind of my little rebellion,—even though I was very well-behaved as a child and would always listen to my parents, being also their eldest daughter,—at seventeen I actually said no I don’t want to study diplomacy in the prestigious university in Russia, I want to try something of my own. So I went off to do just that.
As I received a scholarship to study in Beijing, none of my family could object that I was going; furthermore, the arts academy in Beijing was also a very prestigious university which was something that mattered to my family. I was accepted on the fashion and textiles course where I could exercise my creativity.
I remember when I was younger, around the year 2000’s, there were often documentaries on the law of attraction, the law of the universe, on how to manifest your future; now I don’t see those documentaries anymore, but as a nine or ten year old impressionable child, I was really susceptible to that and I wrote on a piece of paper,—and I remember this really well,—I wrote, I am, I will be an artist and then I hid it somewhere. I never found that piece of paper again. I think I manifested it.
You manifested it and also through your hard work, you then come to London to study?
I first moved back to Moscow after China, and for a while worked in theatre and costume. During that time I learnt a great deal, but it was also very depressive. I was really exploited by all my employers. Being young and trying to gain experience, I worked with amazing theatres, with The Bolshoi Theatre, which is one of the most famous opera and ballet theatres in the world, but they also really underpaid me. In the end, my mental health was affected. I lost a lot of weight throughout that time, I was the thinnest I have ever been.
Whilst I was going through that, I didn’t have a goal because there were no possibilities for career development. I was about twenty-two or twenty-three years old at the time, employed as a creative technologist, and saw women twice my age who had been doing the same job for too many years—I didn’t want that to be my future if I was to continue working there, to be this specific cog in the machine. I just wanted to have some goal in life, a development,— it’s something I didn’t fully realise at the time. I understood later that to look forward to some growth is always needed, well for me it is anyhow.
So I decided to apply to a couple of Master’s in the UK. I had never been there—like I had no idea, I just thought, wouldn’t it be fun if I got into Central St Martins, I romanticised it so much—and at the same time I thought I would never get in.
I applied for the Master’s in performance, design and practice. It was a very interesting and collaborative course.
I was accepted onto the course through just my application and my work. After that, it became a question of how do I actually pay for it now. For people with Russian residency, there were no scholarships to apply for, and there was a whole process of finding funds, borrowing money from family friends.
That’s how I ended up in London and I think this was one of the best decisions of my life even though it’s not an easy thing to make happen due to financial reasons.
Coming to London really changed how I view my own practice, it gave me further confidence in my own work, in the fact that I can be an artist and that people will connect with the work if they find it engaging. I met a lot of people and collaborators through networks in London.
I think I knew why I was heading to this city, it wasn’t really about studying, I came here to practice and I came here to meet people.
You recently represented Uzbekistan at the National Pavilion of the Republic of Uzbekistan at the 60th Venice Biennale of Art, with the engaging ‘Don’t Miss The Cue’, could you tell us about that work and what were the notions you wanted to address through art?
I presented that work together with the collective Qizlar which I co-founded two and half years ago. It’s a socially engaged, activist group with our work supporting young women,—creating platforms for their voices.
When I was asked to represent Uzbekistan for the Venice Biennale of Art, I knew it was a great opportunity and that if I was to do it, it was going to be a big statement. I thought about what kind of statement I wished to make.
In many ways, it just didn’t feel right to do something on my own. Firstly, there’s the question of representation, there are many communities that define Uzbekistan. I direct so much meaning of life from doing the work I’m doing, supporting and working with communities, I fundraise for all the events and projects, it’s something I hold onto dearly, and I wanted to recreate that, a collective statement, something that reflects experiences of a wider community rather than just mine, and which would also involve young woman’s voices, whose voices are not usually heard anywhere.
‘Don’t Miss The Cue’ talks not just about the past but about the present too, our contemporary life. Uzbekistan has such a beautiful history but very often on the international stage what is presented is more of a reference of heritage, artefacts from thousands of years ago, statements to showcase the Sogdian frescos, or an embroidery from hundred of years ago and so on.
Showing an art project on an international level that is commission by a state institution, that is suddenly about contemporary life,—actually about these very current experiences, is huge.
Our installation at the Biennale explored migration, about a generation of women who grew up in a post independent new country, with a new identity that was suddenly forced upon them, alongside Islamic and Russian cultures and influences, as well as a further influence of the globalised world kind of pushed onto them. That generation were the first that could more widely travel, migrate or study elsewhere, take their agency into their own hands. So for ‘Don’t Miss The Cue’, I wanted to explore those notions, the art installation speaks about the process of migration, looking at what is home, and also what is home for me.
Don't Miss the Cue - Aziza Kadyri and Qizlar Collective, Photography by Ivan Erofeev @ azizakadyri.com
Organiser: Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation
Special support: Saida Mirziyoyeva, Advisor to the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan
Commissioner: Gayane Umerova, Chairperson of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation
Curators: Institution of the Centre for Contemporary Art Tashkent
Artist: Aziza Kadyri ; Associate artists: Qizlar Collective (Anastasia Sever, Sofia Seitkhalil, Gulnoza Irgasheva) ; Suzani master: Madina Kasimbaeva
Conceptual development: Kamila Zakhidova ; Soundscape: Fanis Sakellariou, Amalia Aibusheva ; Project management: Laziza Akbarova, Bekzod Ulmasov, Malika Zayniddinova ; Exhibition design and architecture: ADRA Studio, Sophia Bengebara, Pauline Ouazana, Othmane Bengebara ; Artist’s assistant: Camilla Anvar ; Studio coordinator: Denis Stolyarov ; Graphic design: Studio Pupilla ; Exhibition production: We Exhibit
Embroidery and textiles feature in that work, mediums you use in your art in general.
You look into embroidery as a collective expression.
Yes it is one of my interests to showcase. Madina Kasymbaeva, one of the artisan’s I work with, says that Suzani embroidery which is the embroidery technique worked with, is one the first manifestation's of a women’s collective known about in craft in Central Asia.
Embroidery would be one of the only reasons for women to come together and do something together, which in turn would facilitate conversations, gossips, women exchanging news. And that, still happens today.
I interviewed Madina for the ‘Don’t Miss The Cue’ exhibition catalogue and asked her if that still goes on in the studio when the women come to work, and she confirmed that it does,—gathering every morning, talking about life,—such as problems someone might have with their spouse, or an achievement by someone’s child. There is that sense of community.
Even in our Qizlar collective, we are not artisans,—I am the only one that actually works to an extent with textiles, though we sometimes do workshops that are accompanied by giving little swatches of fabric to make something,—but in parallel to that, we talk about everyday life. Conversations occur, and so what is being created becomes also a documentation of the conversations. When we put all the creations together, it’s still a documentation, it becomes a map of the conversations we had, a collective expression, albeit one that is very abstract.
It’s kind of a natural state of being in many ways.
Looking at the ‘AI Suzani Series, Self-exoticisation Archives’, you layer patterns on top of your portraits, when you think of those patterns that stem from your heritage, what do you reflect on, can to tell us more about that?
The 'Al Suzani Series' is achieved through AI (Artificial Intelligence). It’s one of the projects that comes from my interest in Suzani embroidery as a visual language and as a vessel for collective memory. AI in parallel is also becoming a vessel for collective memory, more so for our generation, for this contemporary world,—the globalised world.
I examine commodification and exoticization through the ‘AI Suzani Series, Self-exoticisation Archives’.
When we look at the craft of Suzani now, a lot of the traditional ways of embroidering have been lost due to the former Soviet Union’s industrialisation, and with that the change of priority, as well as the fact that people could not hold domestic manufacturing facilities, as everything had to be collectivised and put into factories.
Then when this craft was revived in the 1990s and early 2000s it sort of started going on these different paths where the essence of the embroidery was lost, and what I mean by that, is that women who hundred of years ago where embroidering would record what they saw around them, it would be a reflection of their inner world, that was important. But it then became commercialised.
Catering to the needs of tourism, we started to see way more soulless pomegranate patterns everywhere, because many had associated it to embroideries, but actually, though yes the pomegranate motif is part of our heritage, it was never so overpowering, so dominating. So the craft felt like it was conserving something meant for a museum, there was a loss of fluidity and for the idea of change.
That’s why I look to work with artisans, to have conversations and to see how they innovate and record what is more relevant and important to them, in a pattern that still respects the stylistic essence and the heritage.
And then also in my art, how can we use technology to help us.
So I’m looking at commodification and this craft that many seem to love. In the West it’s often viewed as exotic, beautiful, with very little idea of what it actually signifies. Turning the craft into just a commodity ignores the meaning of it, of course it is good for the economy of the country that people purchase embroidered items, but it should retain its essence, its core being.
For ‘Al Suzani Series, Self-exoticisation Archives’, I overlay patterns into my own experiences of being a central Asian women artist living in the West where I am either myself exoticised,—very often the most common thing I hear is that I resemble Frida Kahlo, because of my eyebrows and my art is colourful, which is like a very limited understanding of my work or not wanting to go deeper into what do,—or, I am accused of self-exotification because I use my traditional heritage. It’s a lose lose situation really, and so I reflect on that through the ‘Al Suzani Series, Self-exoticisation Archives’. I really exaggerate everything, self-exoticise myself before anyone can either accuse me of it or do it first.
Aziza Kadyri, Film Still of Self-exoticisation Archives (Four), AI Suzani Series, 2023-ongoing
You were mentioning utilising AI to bring craft back into being about the present realm. Would you share more with us about why you chose to use AI and your procedure?
AI to me, it kind of mirrors the essence of something, it recalls for us a collection of images, an endless collection of patterns that remembers for our current world because It’s data mining from the last thirty years, all of the things we have, and are producing.
I fine-tune the AI that I use, so it’s not something that everyone else has, nobody has access to this specific model that I’m applying as I trained it myself on my own images. For the ‘Al Suzani Series, Self-exoticisation Archives’ the AI was trained on Suzani embroidery, transforming my portrait.
We had a recent conversation with art lawyers about the ethics of AI. They mentioned that it’s a great space if you use AI in your own database and it’s pulled from your own database, and then if the final output is heavily edited, then AI does become just a tool, another tool like a paintbrush or other mediums.
Because of my interests I feel it’s natural for me to be engaging in technology,—how to incorporate this feature that is surrounding us anyways, and use it to reflect on the things that we have lost or are losing.
I also used machine learning for movement, detection and post detection on another project with Uzbek traditional dance, looking at dance through this new lens that is more relevant to me because I’m already looking at the world through the lens of technology.
And also with the AI, you are cutting into the bias,
The bias that actually occurs are the biases that come from the wider database that the AI is initially trained on. I don’t code my own AI, I’m not a programmer, I’m using some of the open source solutions that exist that have been trained on billions of images. We can then question,—who made that open source solution, is it a group of white men in Silicon Valley that may already unintentionally have that bias because of the limited images around them and data that train their models, or does this bias occur, not from their selection, but because historically Central Asia hasn’t been outputting that much information as opposed to the US or the West or East—even East Asia. Sometimes biases are not only from the West but also from the East,—China, Japan and Korea are technological giants, they have all this information data as well, so it’s an interesting topic to look at, I don’t have any answers about that, just observations.
Observations are important, as is documenting through embroidery, and through fusing art with technology, I wanted to touch on your work ‘Project Nine Moons’
I use embroidery for that work because it is based on my great grandmother’s dowry which was a large piece of traditional Suzani embroidery depicting nine celestial moons in a 3x3 grid-like format.
It’s a very specific embroidery technique, not so much done anymore, from the Jizzakh region which is where my great grandmother—who’s name Oybibi translates as ‘The Moon Dame,—husband came from.
The large Suzani embroidered dowry was cut up into many parts, and we were left with a couple of them that were distributed amongst my family and extended family. 
The two parts left to my family, which we’ve had for as long as I can remember, became my starting point for my own work,—my installation— ‘Project Nine Moons’. The installation recreates the dowry piece but it’s not a faithful recreation, it’s an installation shaped into a non-hierarchal Family Tree—a Shajara that depicts women’s stories. I researched and then reconstructed the dowry, creating its missing parts to represent the different experiences of the women in my family. Family histories and women’s entangled identities in Uzbekistan.
Through the research,—reading my grandfather’s memoirs, it highlighted the presence of men but not that of the women, historically the Shajara—the Family Tree only recorded men’s names, never the women’s names. So that’s why I decided to create this non-hierarchical genealogical Shajara—Family Tree. Threads connect the loose hand-stitched embroidered pieces into a large piece, to respect the idea that embroidery was a visual language for women.
That visual language illustrates untold stories, to excavate these memories of the stories that were told. One story comes from my grandmother’s diary—she wrote some things down, I read the whole thing,—the other stories came from oral storytelling tradition and things that I remember from childhood.
What I recalled from my youth already had visual associations, that’s why some of the images in ‘Project Nine Moons’ are figurative and naive, but it’s a reconstruction of the stories and the visuals.
Each time I went to visit my grandmothers’, who are both with us, or to my mum’s, prompting them to retell stories to me, they would do so but I would receive them slightly different, I found that interesting, the stories became looser, like mythologised, where you don’t know what’s real and what’s fantasy anymore and I really like that, a kind of uncertainty.
My favourite genre is Magical Realism, the story told becomes more impactful.
So much of 'Project Nine Moons' is reconstructing these very primary visual associations and telling the stories through that.
Then there's the digital dimension to ‘Project Nine Moons’. A QR code links to a website with all the women’s stories featured in the work, written down,—the once invisible narratives shared.
These once untold stories speak of the patriarchy, colonialism, religion and ideology.
Furthermore, there's an augmented reality feature where you are able to see the context and look at archival photographs in a 360-degree space. https://www.azizakadyri.com/9moons
Aziza Kadyri, Project Nine Moon, 2023, All photography taken at Aziza Kadyri's exhibition Spinning Tales (11th October 2024 - 19th January 2025) at Pushkin House in London
What are you working on and what is coming up next?
When I start a project and start researching, I’ll then make an entire installation but it will tend to be the first iteration of it, and I end up continuing the project into further installations. For example with the project ‘Her Stage' I have so far made three iterations. It is about my grandmother’s unrealised dream of becoming a traditional folk dancer back in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Even though it’s about my grandmother it’s also about what was happening at the time. In the most recent work, it includes videos where she narrates her own story, and there wasn’t a formal interview, I was recording our conversations over dinner. Actually in the first ten minutes of one of the recordings, my grandmother is trying to encourage me to eat more cutlets or something similar.
I also use machine leaning and AI in this project, to analyze movement and to create a non-existent choreography where I then take from this non existing stage choreography and return it back into the physical realm recording gestures in textile sculptures.
One of these sculptures is currently on show in Berlin and another in Milan.
This project is ongoing, and I am also currently doing a residency, a creative technologist fellowship at Somerset House in conjunction with Creative Computing Institute where I examine contemporary technology, cultural heritage and textiles merging, looking at how we can create more responsive environments in textiles.
The result of the fellowship will be an exhibition at Somerset house next autumn.
And further to that, there are a few commissions and more exhibitions too.
So we should watch this space for that and can find out more at https://www.azizakadyri.com and https://www.instagram.com/aziza.kadyri/
Aziza Kadyri, Video Stills from Kadyrova Street, 2020
Created and performed by Aziza Kadyri; Sound design: Fanis Sakellariou; Sound design assistance: Aziza Kadyri;
Production support: Ludwig Meslet, Mouse Green; Sculptures by Mouse Green
Aziza Kadyri, Project Nine Moon, 2023, All photography taken at Aziza Kadyri's exhibition Spinning Tales (11th October 2024 - 19th January 2025) at Pushkin House in London
Aziza Kadyri is a London-based multidisciplinary artist with a focus on extended reality (AR/VR), live/digital performance, experimental costume, and textiles. Originally from Uzbekistan, she graduated with a degree in Fashion Design from Tsinghua University, Beijing in 2017 and was awarded an MA in Performance Practice and Design with Distinction from Central Saint Martins in 2020.
Throughout her professional career, she has produced designs for theatre, live performance, film, and XR projects internationally across the Eurasian continent. She has also facilitated art workshops for a number of socially engaged projects. Aziza was the main artist of the Uzbekistan National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024.
Aziza's approach is grounded in a fusion of collaboration and interdisciplinary methodologies that drive the creation of both physical and digital immersive experiences. She is also interested in participatory practices with local communities. Aziza's 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.
Photography courtesy and copyright © Aziza Kadyri