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I dreamt of returning to Central Asia for many years. I imagined feeling its distinct air. I longed to see its mountains. My ideas about Central Asia belong to my mother's fantastic stories about my family in Samarkand and Bukhara and their eventful flight to Afghanistan at the outset of the Bolshevik Revolution.

In October 2003, I got an email from the Harvard Central Asia List, which connects Central-Asian scholars around the world. The email announced the Second International Festival of Arts: "Peace and Respect," a beautiful statement about bringing Central Asia together.

Immediately, I wrote the coordinators and introduced myself, proposing to include contemporary art in their festival. My goal as a curator was to increase the visibility of contemporary art by featuring work from international artists, both Western and non-Western, illustrating their views on modern society. The committee approved the proposal, and my dream became a reality.

The festival hosted 192 participants from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Belgium, Japan, Russia, and Switzerland, in an effort to link the arts to nation states, tradition to modernity, and Central Asia to the world. Remarkably, I was the only U.S. representative in the festival.

I arrived not in Samarkand or Bukhara, as I imagined, but in Kyrgyztan's capital, Bishkek. The jetlag was a bitch -- no sleep for three days -- but it was a small price to pay for my dream to come true. I breathed the air of my childhood. I was literally next door to my birthplace, Afghanistan.

As I roamed the streets, I had flashbacks of Kabul in the late 1970s. Like Kabul, Bishkek is surrounded by gray, white mountains. Tall, thin chinar (plane) trees line its streets. Structures are low, white, and rectangular -- signs of modernity on a budget. But I reminded myself that the buildings of my childhood now lie in rubble.

I wondered what Afghanistan would look like if Afghans had not resisted the Soviets. Most Central Asians yielded to Russian power at the close of the 19th century. The Afghans, however, are stubborn. They fight for self-determination, but they also forget to stop fighting. In either case, there was a definite price to pay.

Passing through the bazaars, I imagined myself there a century earlier, speaking to people in many languages, among many cultures. We would select dialects and languages randomly and at will: Farsi, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Kazakh. Today we are reduced to communicating with each other in two foreign languages -- Russian and English. Yet, people are still connected to their spirit in a distinctly Central Asian way: their creativity, hospitality, and love for nature.

It is impossible to ignore the effects of 70 years of Soviet domination, but it is also naive to continue understanding the region by its past. When thinking of Central Asia, most people think of its history. Yet, Central Asia is living, producing and creating in the present.

This tendency to discount the dynamism of Central Asia is why I named the exhibition "Contemporaneity," which means "the state of being in the present."

"Contemporaneity" opened in the Aytiev State Museum of Fine Arts on April 27, 2004. It showcased video works I selected from 13 artists around the world, including five Afghan artists from the United States. The exhibit displayed works that fall under the wide scope of formal and conceptual contemporary art. It aimed to address contemporary issues: globalization, immigration, integration, ethics and culture. "Contemporaneity" was the festival's first attempt to feature contemporary art.

Contemporary art is almost entirely absent in fine-art curriculums in the all-state universities and museums -- dominated by the Soviet mentality: slow, bureaucratic and inefficient operations -- of Central Asia. Young artists have limited access to the forum and are just beginning to approach new mediums, such as video art.

Initially, the video works were scheduled to show in a large black box for standing audiences, but I felt that an intimate theater setting would be more appropriate. I was rewarded when Miran Mohar, member of the famous Slovenian artists group Irwin, expressed that he appreciated sitting down to watch the videos, rather than having to zoom past them in a typical gallery setting.

At the opening reception of "Contemporaneity", my curator's talk invited discussion on the increased visibility of Central Asian contemporary art and the acceptance of art in a conflicted world of cultural divide. I shared my objective of solidifying the relationship between Eastern and Western artists and strengthening the identity of contemporary art in Central Asia, so that the artists of this region can be actively involved with the dialogue and issues of the global art forum.

"Contemporaneity" was also presented in Osh, a smaller city in south Kyrgyzstan, and in Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent. There is a small, but strong contemporary-art scene growing in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. In 2001 and 2003, Tashkent hosted two contemporary art biennials.

Just before my show opened, Kurama Art -- the only contemporary-art gallery in Bishkek -- held an exhibition called "…And Others." The exhibition included installation, painting, sculpture, and video works by 25 artists from Central Asia, Russia, and the Eastern-European Republics -- comparable to exhibits in New York City. I was thrilled to see such an exhibit and thoroughly impressed by the quality of the works.

In all, I visited three cities in Central Asia and witnessed the region's movement toward contemporaneity in every sense of the word. I did not imagine I would meet cutting-edge fashion designers in Kyrgyzstan or attend concerts of Vivaldi, but I did. Central Asia is a modern melting pot, yet its ingredients are distinct. This is the region of the Silk Road, the nucleus of Asia, and the meeting point of civilizations.

The ground is fertile for contemporary art in Central Asia. When I first thought of curating "Contemporaneity," I could not imagine the response. Yet, it was received with much enthusiasm, curiosity and interest. My conversations with artists, managers and art practitioners revolved around contemporary art, its visibility and practice in the region, and the need to create further East-West exchange and dialogue.