In Dhikr (2025), part of Han Mengyun’s film installation Suffering Hands, Broken Thread commissioned for the inaugural Bukhara Biennial, Uzbek women in a textile factory sit close to the ground, bodies folded in focused intensity. Their fingers move like rapid breath—swift, insistent, almost involuntary—as they maneuver their looms, each pluck and pull forming muted percussion. The soundscape expands into a quiet polyphony: the hum of machinery, a whirring fan, distant traffic, a baby’s soft wail. Every shot is composed with the precision of a painter’s eye, yet the work’s potency lies less in image than tempo. Layered rhythms—of labor, learning, and persistent, patient making—emerge as Han’s operative grammar, threading gesture and thought across bodies and borders.