Nigora Sharafkhojaeva was born in 1978 in Jizak city.
She graduated from the Republican College of Arts, the Theatrical Costume Department, qualifying as artist and costume designer, and later on she completed her studies at the National Institute of Arts and Design named after K. Bekhzad, the Department of theatrical still painting. Upon graduation from the Institute Nigora worked at the Republican Puppet Theatre as scene-painter. Since 2007 she has been working at the Fine Arts Gallery of Uzbekistan.
Sharafkhojaeva participated in the “5+1″ exhibition held in April 2008, which was an unusual event in contemporary artistic practice that opened a new way into the world of actual art associated with new technologies and materials, new trends, forms and expressive means, which are more in line with the changing reality. Sharafkhojaeva has been searching for her own way in all kinds of representational art, such as installation, performance, video- and photo-art, etc. At the “5+1″ exhibition she presented her first item called “C.U.B.”, through which she explored various psychological states of a human being. The installation is notable for the rhythmical structuring of its shape-making components. The same item was presented by Nigora during the Navkiron Uzbekiston contest held in August 2008. The “C.U.B.” drew attention of many art critics, artists and contest participants.
On the 20th of November Sharafkhojaeva took part in the “Moon-Face” exhibition (curator Academician of the AAU Dr. A. Khakimov), which demonstrated lavish employment of the same artistic method. Installation “LUN@LIK.YA” that the artist made of compact-discs expressed certain modern-world stereotypes that challenge the dogma on technocratic modern woman. The composition excited keen interest and discussion among the visitors as it looked unusual and sculpturally expressive.
At the academic/experimental conference EGO V “Moon-Face” (also supervised by A. A. Khakimov) held at the National Institute of Arts and Design named after K. Bekhzad Nigora Sharafkhojaeva was awarded Diploma of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan for her active work in the domain of contemporary actual art.
Nigora participated in the “Vertical Line” exhibition of the “5+1″ group of artists (curator art historian Saodat Ruzieva) that took place in February 2009. For the exhibition Sharafkhojaeva prepared a new modern installation called “BRIDGE” that is made of plastic videocassettes and tapes. The author of the installation believes that “a human being is a vertical intercept. His material presence on earth as a living flesh, where he came from and where he will go, is inevitable. For this reason my “BRIDGE” does not connect anything. It seems to hover in the void.
According to Nigora Sharafkhojaeva, “Everyone searching for his own way of self-expression in any area, and in art particularly faces a challenging task of finding something that would be his own, something special, something that rings true. Trying my skill in the new trend I started to realize that there are no canons, no fixed rules for expressing a form in actual art. One has to create as one feels like; sometimes emotions control you and you feel an overwhelming freedom to act”. The art of the young woman-artist and her exploring the multitude of planes help her create her own actual world of art in which one can already discern a promising master.
Sukhrob Kurbanov