Today, as part of the 61st Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, the National Pavilion of Uzbekistan “The Aural Sea” has opened, dedicated to the Aral Sea — not only as an ecological catastrophe, but also as a space of human memory and cultural heritage.
With the opening of the pavilion in Venice, the poem “The Aral Sea Is Leaving” by Raim Farkhadi, written in 1967, comes to mind — one of the earliest poetic testimonies of an unfolding ecological disaster, a bold act by a poet and citizen of his land.
Today, this dialogue continues — in art, memory, and new generations.
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Photographs presented here were taken by his grandson in 2026 during a visit to Nukus, Karakalpakstan, in the Aral Sea region.
Three generations. One sea. One memory.