Zulfiya Spowart

Zulfiya Spowart (b. 1991, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) is a multidisciplinary artist based in London.
She is a participating artist in The Aural Sea, the Uzbekistan Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale (2026). She holds a BA in Mural Art from the National Institute of Art and Design named after Kamoliddin Behzod.
Working across textiles, wood, sculpture and installation, Spowart builds material  environments through processes of stitching, layering, carving and assembly. Using recycled and previously used materials that retain traces of touch, labour and repair, she treats materiality as a register of embodied experience, repetition and transmission.
Her practice explores care as a system that operates across domestic, institutional and
social structures, encompassing motherhood, childcare, ageing, illness and forms of bodily regulation. Through these interconnected conditions, she examines how everyday acts of support, maintenance and discipline shape lived experience while often remaining outside public visibility.
Drawing on Central Asian material cultures as systems of knowledge rather than vernacular forms, her work foregrounds the relationship between function, gesture and collective memory. Forms emerge through use, carrying histories of labour, care and intergenerational transmission.
Recent presentations include Elly-Belly (London, 2024), In/Visible: The Changing Shape of Womanhood (France, 2024), participation in the Silk Road Pavilion at the London Design Biennale, Surface Reflections (Somerset House, 2025). She was an artist in residence at Art’otel Hoxton, London, in 2025. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Ruhsor Museum of Contemporary Art in Samarkand and in the collection of Regeneration Gallery, Tashkent.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Exhibitions: 'Elly Belly' (solo), London, 2024; 'In/Visible: The Changing Shape of Womanhood' (group), Galerie De'Lest, Compiegne, France, 2024; Silk Road Pavilion, London Design Biennial, 2025; Press Coverage: Elle Ozbekiston article (interview); Residencies: Artist in Residence, Art'Otel Hoxton, 2025