Saodat Ismailova on Post-Soviet Central Asia and Ancestral Resilience

Saodat Ismailova, a Central Asian artist born in Tashkent in 1981, explores the political and environmental upheavals of the post-Soviet period through her diverse artistic practices, including film, sculpture, installation, and sound. She has recently wrapped up solo exhibitions at the Swiss Institute in New York and Portikus in Frankfurt, and took part in the group show "TURANDOT: To the Daughters of the East" at Parasol unit in Venice. Currently, her significant institutional survey, "Melted into the Sun," is being showcased at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC. In a conversation with Marcella Lista, chief curator at the Centre Pompidou, Ismailova reflects on her childhood during Uzbekistan's shift from Soviet control to independence in 1991, recalling the hope and excitement of that era, as well as the ideological void it left behind. Influenced by her brother, painter Babur Ismailov, she discovered VHS tapes of filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov, and Ali Khamraev, who were not part of the curriculum at the Uzbekistan State Institute of Arts and Culture. These cinematic inspirations, along with forgotten Uzbek films presented by Yusup Razykov, significantly impacted her visual style, which she revisited in her upcoming 2025 film "Swan Lake."