Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains presents from February 10 to April 30, 2023, the exhibition Saodat Ismailova. Double horizon» in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou. The opportunity to discover in Tourcoing, in the heart of the European metropolis of Lille, the first exhibition dedicated to the Uzbek artist in France.
Saodat Ismailova presents his original film works at the Fresnoy - National Studio until April 30, 2023. It crosses the great tradition of observation cinema to build a new language, which seeks to account for cultures and beliefs buried, made invisible by the clean slate of the twentieth century. The first exhibition dedicated to the Uzbek artist in France brings together around his major pieces a rich network of artistic conversations within Central Asia and beyond.
His works question a divided memory in which ancestral beliefs and the imprint of Russian and then Soviet domination are superimposed. Her filmic writing combines the severity of the female condition, the decline of natural resources, the persistent enigma of life, magical practices and the desire for the absolute.
- Zukhra (2013)
- The Letters (2014-2017)
- Stains of Oxus (2016)
- Two Horizons (2017)
- The Haunted (2018)
- Chillahona (2022)
Born in Tashent in 1981, Saodat Ismailova trained in film and television studies at the National Institute of Arts in Tashkent, where the Russian heritage was transmitted during the Soviet era. Exploring the diverse cultures that shape Central Asia has been at the heart of her practice since her first short films in the mid-2000s.
She pays particular attention to the ritual practices of music and dance, as well as to the transformations of the landscape through intensive exploitation and heavy industry throughout the 20th century. His work gradually incorporates objects, fruits of field research on vernacular traditions that survived Soviet domination.
In 2013, she represented Central Asia at the Venice Biennale with a video piece, Zukhra, which focuses on the myths surrounding the planet Venus. The artist finds here the first node of a conjunction of intimate, collective myths and macro-history. The work seems to examine the dreamlike unconscious of a sleepy girl: it testifies to a study of the dream stories that Ismailova collected from rural communities.
In 2018, the artist graduated from the Fresnoy – National Studio where she created two installations with multiple projections: Stains of Oxus (2016) paints a portrait of the Amou-Darya river, which crosses Central Asia from Pamir to the Aral Sea, while Two horizons (2017) connects the Russian space station in Baikonur to the first shamans who once lived on the same site.
The series of photographs The Letters (2014-2017) and the film The Haunted (2018), recently entered the collection of the Centre Pompidou, subtly elaborate the idea of an encrypted memory that extinction threatens, between the constant linguistic palimpsest of Central Asia and the totemic image of the tiger of the Caspian Sea, a once sacred species that has not resisted intensive land use.
In 2022, the artist participated in the Venice Biennale and the Documenta de Cassel and received the Eye Prize from the Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam.
A rich agenda
The Fresnoy offers a varied programme ranging from a brunch on 19 March to a movie-tale on Saturday 29 April. The artist, Saodat Ismailova, will be present on Monday, March 20 for an unpublished screening of films chosen by the latter. Every Sunday, free guided tours are offered, including one specially designed for children. Events and all information are to be found on the site of the Fresnoy.