Saodat Ismailova’s first major institutional solo exhibition, ‘18,000 Worlds’, reviews more than a decade of films, sculptures and research. The artist’s mystical and visually dense practice draws on stylistic elements including the incorporation of grainy archival footage, written and spoken interpretations of dreams, and the filming of traditional rituals and weather-worn landscapes.
The first film presented, Zukhra, 2013, offers an unambiguous framing of a bed in a sterile room. The very gradual rise and fall of the light reveals the bed either empty or with a female figure reclining motionless on it. The soundtrack features a female voice narrating the legend of Zukhra – a young woman who would become the planet Venus – as well as archival recordings of Uzbekistan’s first president. The shamanic tinges of the work overlay the rich history of the region, as well as the importance that women play, and have played, in perpetuating these myths and rituals.
Beneath the screen of this installation, a traditional Uzbek rug, draped over a dim light source, echoes the topography of the Hazrat Sulton Mountains. Embellishing craftsmanship with more contemporary technologies like neon and projection, Ismailova offers temporary monuments, treatises that highlight the decline of a specific cultural existence while enshrining its presence.
The most recent work in the exhibition, 18,000 worlds, 2022–23, builds on the artist’s belief that we only live in one of countless planes of existence. By drawing on her own personal archives as well as those of the Eye Filmmuseum, Ismailova reveals a certain richness to us. Yet with that abundance comes a sharp insight into how things blend into the story, too.
