ART AND THE RESTORATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN UZBEKISTAN IN THE EARLY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

Abstract

This paper examines how the visual arts of Uzbekistan and the system of art
institutions contributed to the restoration of national identity after independence. It focuses
on painting of the 1990s, its imagery and the institutional restructuring of the art field,
centred on the Academy of Arts (1997). It also traces how, by the early 2000s, the ethnomodernist paradigm gave way to research-based and conceptual practices.