Diana Campbell
Artistic Director of Bukhara Biennial’s first edition, Recipes for Broken Hearts
Artistic Director Diana Campbell, who is also the Artistic Director of the Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation and is the Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, comments: ‘For centuries, religious and cultural traditions from all corners of the world have commingled in Bukhara, resulting in a rich atmosphere of learning, craft and artistic production.
‘It has always been a place where people came together to find togetherness in the quest for a more meaningful life through a search for spiritual, intellectual, and worldly knowledge. Recipes for Broken Hearts will emphasise this legacy by revitalising some of the extraordinary sites that were essential to developing the culture that we celebrate today, bringing them back into the pulse of life of the city through an interdisciplinary event which goes beyond the traditional notions of an art biennial.’
Diana Campbell is a Los Angeles-born curator and writer whose practice focuses on institution building and creating forums for interdisciplinary cultural convenings globally.
She is the Artistic Director of the inaugural edition of the Bukhara Biennial, Recipes for Broken Hearts, launching in September 2025.
Campbell is the Founding Artistic Director of the Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation in Bangladesh, a leading South Asian institution dedicated to fostering the growth of local artists and creating opportunities for profound encounters with Bangladesh. She is the Chief Curator of its flagship project, the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), having led its critically acclaimed editions from 2014 to 2023, and is currently envisioning the 2026 edition.
As Head of Global Initiatives of the Hartwig Art Foundation in Amsterdam, she works across expanded notions of collecting, commissioning and collaborating, and is part of the facilitation group of AFIELD, a global network of socially engaged artistic initiatives.
Homo Faber has appointed Campbell as one of their Craft Experts to identify talented artisans in the Asia Pacific region and bring her expertise to the 2024 Biennial. Previously held curatorial roles, include curator of Frieze Projects for Frieze London in 2018–2019 and co-curator of the 2023 edition of Desert X in Coachella Valley.
Committed to working actively between the spaces of art, craft, performance, design and architecture, Campbell has commissioned numerous interdisciplinary global projects. Among her commissions and curated projects, Campbell has worked with over 1900 creatives from over 70 countries including Antony Gormley, Kashef Chowdhury (URBANA), Korakrit Arunanondchai, Otobong Nkanga, Paul Pfeiffer, Rana Begum, Rizvi Hassan, Shakuntala Kulkarni and Sumayya Vally (Counterspace).
Collaborating with the world’s leading scholars and institutions, she bridges the gap between scholarship and exhibition-making, commencing initiatives such as MAHASSA (Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia) by Getty Foundation, Samdani Art Foundation, Cornell University’s Institute for Comparative Modernities, and Asia Art Archive; the EDI Global Forum for Education and Integration; and the DAS International Art Mediators Programme.
Maternally of CHamoru descent, Campbell has written extensively on indigeneity, art, and architecture. Her writing has been published by Phaidon, MoMa, Frieze and Rizzoli among others.
She has been recognised as one of the most influential figures in the art world by the ArtReview Power100 list (2019–2023).
Wael Al Awar
Creative Director of Architecture
Wael Al Awar is an architect and founding partner of Dubai- and Tokyo-based firm waiwai. He founded waiwai (formerly ibda design) after returning to the Middle East from Tokyo. Wael layers his interests in natural phenomena into an architecture of light, time, structure, and landscape. He seeks to create an architecture that is more than fabrication, that remains open to adaptation. His site-specific designs encourage unexpected experiences. Wael curated the UAE National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021, which was awarded the Golden Lion.