In recent years, a new generation of Uzbek artists has begun to reshape how culture, history, and identity are visually narrated.
Among them is Oyjon Khayrullaeva, whose practice moves fluidly between photography, digital collage, and large-scale public installations.
I have interviewed the artist for Times of Central Asia.
Here is the link to the interview
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Gigantic rulers and compasses appear throughout Ala Younis’s practice—as literal objects in some works, and as symbolic motifs in others. With these tools, the multimedia artist draws unexpected connections between competing imaginaries.
In her midcareer retrospective “Past of a Temporal Universe,” which traced nearly two decades of her career, little was immediately evident as Younis’s artistic language draws from academia, architecture, and archives. Instead, the show was conceived for slow and attentive engagement.
I have reviewed Ala Younis’ exhibition at the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery for ArtAsiaPacific.
Here is the link to the review
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I have written the curatorial text for the exhibition, Hidden in the Jungle, from 6 January to 6 February 2026, by artist Inessa Kalabekova at Fullerton Hotel.
I had the pleasure of following the evolution of Kalabekova’s work for many years now, visiting her studio in Singapore and contributing curatorial texts to her shows
Below is my curatorial text called “Restoring the Ancestral“
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I’m starting to type this review at Café Metcha in Seoul, and I’m finishing it at Bar Veneruso in Sorrento. In other words, I’m starting it in a place where I’m very far from my former self, spearheaded into future me, and I’m finishing by penning it down in my hometown. It feels like reconnecting the two halves.
As every year, I choose a double theme for 2025, namely two words that work in tandem, as two synergistic aspects I wanted to embody throughout the year. It was supposed to be Sturdy/Shameless, but it ended up becoming more Nomadism/Community.
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Like institutions globally, Norway’s biggest art museums are trying to adapt, sometimes haltingly, to a society whose values are shifting in real time. I travelled to Oslo to report for the Observer.
Here is the link to the article
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Born in Casablanca in 1969, Ymane Fakhir is a Franco-Moroccan artist based in Marseille. Trained at the Casablanca School of Fine Arts, the Aix-en-Provence School of Art and the Arles National School of Photography, she combines photography, video and installation to explore memory, rituals and intangible heritage.
I have interviewed the artist for the Hebdo du Quotidien de l’Art.
Here is the link to the interview (in French)
I have written a piece on architecture in Benghazi for the German webmagazine Qantara. As Benghazi’s Italian-era architecture disappears, an exhibition brings together architects and artists rethinking the city’s history — reassessing the colonial past without celebrating it.
Here is the link to the article
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During Paris Art Week I have interviewed Moroccan/Italian/French artist El Mehdi Largo, an artist plays with Orientalist perceptions. His work reveals the humanity and the sacred underlying national, religious, and ethnic differences.
Here is the link to the interview
For art lovers, there is only one way to do it all during the ever-growing list of art weeks: cloning. However, since we are not there yet, the only option seems to be a strict selection of shows to attend among the plethora of exhibitions.
In Paris last month, amid the swirl of new voices, major retrospectives and multiple art fairs across arrondissements, I chose one that allowed me to decelerate and truly see: “UMBRA,” Nika Neelova’s solo exhibition, on view through December 19 at NIKA Project Space in Komunuma.
I wrote the article for the Observer.
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I wrote a piece for ArtAsiaPacific on the Parisian art fair AsiaNow. What clearly emerges from the fair, is how the economic dynamism of the Middle East is fostering new connections between the Gulf and other thriving art scenes, from Korea to Southeast Asia.
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The art world came to Turkey in September for two high-profile events: Contemporary Istanbul and the 18th Istanbul Biennial. Against a backdrop of political crisis and growing censorship, organisers and artists found creative ways to stay relevant. I wrote the article for Qantara.
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There, Where Wings Grow opens as a multifaceted meditation on the cycles of nature, and particularly on the steppe, explored by several Central Asian artists through ecological, historical, and mythic lenses. What emerges is not a nostalgic portrait of a nomadic past but a layered reflection on resilience and renewal.
At the center of the curatorial vision is Alan Medoev, the archaeologist whose 1960s expeditions uncovered hundreds of sites across the Kazakh steppe. His discoveries challenged Soviet portrayals of the region as an empty expanse and instead presented it as a cradle of memory. The exhibition extends that lineage, tracing how the steppe continues to act as an archive where cultural, personal, and ecological time intersect.
Here is the link to the article
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Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
