As I sit in the courtyard of the 16th-century Khoja Gavkushon complex and watch the water catch the late afternoon light, I’m struck by how the site embodies the spirit of Uzbekistan’s first international art biennial. This courtyard has witnessed centuries of gathering, commerce, and cultural exchange. Now it serves as the beating heart of the biennial’s inaugural edition, where tradition and contemporary art converge in ways both tender and transformative.

Dust gets on everything here—my black pants will never be quite the same again. But as curator Diana Campbell said, standing next to Subodh Gupta’s pavilion on the biennial’s opening day, “The sun, the wind, the dust are all collaborators in this work.” It’s a philosophy that runs counter to the sterile white cube galleries of the international art world, a statement “against over museum-ifying.” In the Bukhara Biennial (on view through November 20), art lives where people live.

Located in the heart of Central Asia, Bukhara was an intellectual and economic center situated along the Silk Road, a place where, during its 16th-century golden age, religious and cultural traditions from all corners of the world commingled. The biennial continues that tradition by commissioning works that will go on to have lives of their own and travel globally, reverberating.

The ...