Uzbek takeover in Brera

A design fair in Milan is about to get an installation about a disappearing sea. From April 20 to 26, Uzbekistan’s Art and Culture Development Foundation is taking over Palazzo Citterio in Brera with “When Apricots Blossom,” an immersive show inside Milan Design Week 2026. (acdf.uz) The venue is not a trade-show booth on the edge of town. Palazzo Citterio sits at Via Brera 12 inside the Brera Design District, which is one of the busiest routes for Fuorisalone visitors during design week. (fuorisalone.it) Uzbekistan is using that foot traffic to tell a national story through objects, rooms, and performances. The project is commissioned by Gayane Umerova, chair of the Art and Culture Development Foundation, and curated by architect Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture. (acdf.uz) The title comes from a 1930s poem by Uzbek writer Hamid Olimjon. The exhibition uses that line about apricot blossom to frame hope and renewal, but the subject underneath is much harsher: the Aral Sea region and Karakalpakstan in northwestern Uzbekistan. (acdf.uz) Karakalpakstan is the part of Uzbekistan hit hardest by the collapse of the Aral Sea. The sea was once one of the world’s largest inland lakes, and it has lost more than 90 percent of its volume since the 1960s after Soviet irrigation projects diverted the rivers that fed it. (timesca.com) Instead of explaining that history with maps on a wall, the Milan show breaks daily life into three sections: textiles, food, and shelter. That turns an environmental disaster into things visitors can touch, recognize, and compare to life before the water disappeared. (fuorisalone.it) The exhibition brings in 12 designers to make new works with Uzbek artisans and regional materials. The listed names include Bethan Laura Wood, Fernando Laposse, Marcin Rusak, Raw-Edges, Didi NG Wing Yin, Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Glithero, and Sevara Haydarova Donazzan. (dezeen.com) Some of those pieces are built from materials tied directly to the region’s landscape. Early project images and descriptions mention local reeds from Karakalpakstan, Uzbek hand-weaving, wood carving, and a large threshold tapestry at the entrance to Palazzo Citterio. (myartguides.com) This is also Uzbekistan’s first appearance at Milan Design Week through the foundation. The foundation calls it a landmark debut, which helps explain why the project is staged as a full-building cultural statement instead of a small product launch. (acdf.uz) Milan Design Week has become the place where countries test that kind of statement in public. In Brera, where visitors move from furniture launches to museum courtyards in a single afternoon, Uzbekistan is inserting Karakalpakstan and the Aral Sea into the same route as the world’s biggest design brands. (breradesignweek.it) So the real surprise is not that Uzbekistan is showing craft in Italy. It is that one of design week’s prime addresses is being used to stage a story about ecology, memory, and national identity, with Palazzo Citterio acting less like a showroom and more like a temporary embassy made of textiles, bread trays, reeds, and rooms. (gulftoday.ae)