FIELD MEETING Take 7: Thinking Pilgrimage marked the latest chapter in the Asia Contemporary Art Forum’s (ACAF) FIELD MEETING series, shifting from its high-energy lecture-performance presentations at leading institutions to a caravan-style journey through Uzbekistan’s sacred cities and landscapes—Khiva, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. 

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Drawing on the region’s history as a center of the Islamic Renaissance and its enduring legacy of knowledge, spirituality, and exchange, 20 artists, curators, and spiritual practitioners traversed architectural marvels and elemental terrains, anchoring the journey with meditations, performative dialogues, site-specific responses, and healing rituals. As they moved through spaces long revered by seekers, the program enacted the “field” not only as a geographical site but as a shared state of consciousness—a liminal terrain in which pilgrimage becomes a curatorial method, and knowledge is both shared and embodied through co-creation. Here, art-making and curating are journeys of ideas: transformative acts that integrate tradition and innovation, dissolve ego, and awaken the spirit. Curated by Leeza Ahmady, Director of the Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF), formerly the founding director of programs at the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts (FSA).

 

See Full Curatorial Statement HERE                        

 

See Full Documentation of Offerings & Activations by Participating Artists in their Profile Pages BELOW