HPR Archive / 2026
New Uzbekistan
Kamila Rustambekova
About the project
New Uzbekistan
New Uzbekistan is a mosaic series of staged and documentary scenes made across Uzbekistan. At the intersection of fiction and documentary, the project constructs a portrait of Uzbekistan's layered identity through recurring patterns, popular narratives.
The title references the ideological slogan "Yangi O'zbekiston" ("New Uzbekistan"), which has been central to the current government's narrative of national renewal and reform. Although widely promoted, New Uzbekistan remains ambiguous and vague in practice — I'm not even sure if it exists. So I offer my own version of a mosaic-like portrait of Uzbekistan — at times new, at ancient.