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What happens to a culture when it moves thousands of kilometres? This is one of the questions that drives the work of Aitan Ebrahimoff (1991). Through video installations and documentaries, he explores how diasporic communities adapt, transform, mutate, or exaggerate their identities.
The installation Shot Host (2026) features material from his first feature-length documentary, Hungry Host (2026): a collective portrait of the Bukharian Jews from Uzbekistan, both at home and in the diaspora. This community has a layered history. Once part of the Persian world, they spoke Farsi, but under the Soviet Union they became Russified. Their language and traditions merged with Russian culture, while their religious identity was stigmatized.
Today, only about a thousand Bukharian Jews remain in Uzbekistan, compared to approximately 70,000 in New York. Ebrahimoff feels a strong affinity with this community. His father’s family history spans Iran, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan before reaching the United Kingdom. ‘They are proxy kin’, he says, ‘distant relatives with whom I share a story of movement and transformation.’
The central scene of Shot Host unfolds in an Uzbek restaurant in Queens, New York. Karaoke in Russian, fragments of Farsi, vodka and shashlik form a collage of languages and gestures that reveals how culture edits itself under political and geographical pressure. The scene is sculpted to isolate individuals from the celebrations. The relationship between filming and hosting is scrutinized. Ebrahimoff points out that ‘shot’ is an anagram of ‘host’ and invites viewers to take a shot while watching the video.
Written by Sarah van Binsbergen