For decades, the region has been presented to the outside world through a familiar set of images: silk roads and textiles, nomadic traditions and craft, ornament and folklore. While these references remain an important part of the story, they can obscure a more complex reality. The countries that make up Central Asia have spent the last century negotiating dramatic political and cultural change. Centuries-old traditions, the experience of Soviet modernity and the decades following independence all continue to shape contemporary life. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that questions of memory, inheritance and belonging recur so frequently in the work of the designers emerging from the region today.
