Uzbek Ismailova wins the Eye Art & Film Prize with ‘images that can heal us’

“Silence is the language of truth,” says Uzbek artist Saodat Ismailova. On Friday it was announced that she will win the prestigious Eye Art & Film Prize 2022. That is a prize of almost 30,000 euros from the Eye Film Museum and PJLF Arts Fund, which is awarded annually to an artist whose oeuvre moves at the intersection of art and film.

“Ismailova manages to create an almost spiritual space that goes beyond the images and the soundtrack. She seduces us to ‘hear’ our image and ‘see’ sound. Her oeuvre is intriguing, mysterious and involved”, according to the jury report, which also mentions that Ismailova manages to bring Uzbek cultural heritage into the limelight in a surprising way. This makes her stand out among a ‘new generation of artists from Central Asia’. Her work can also be seen this summer at Documenta in Kassel.

Turkmen tiger

Saodat Ismailova was born in Tashkent in 1981, and although she lives alternately in Tashkent and Paris, her work is about Uzbekistan and the oppressed man, who is trapped by traditions but also their disappearance. Her video installation The Haunted (2016) on the extinct Turkmen tiger is, in that respect, typical of the themes she tackles by the head. You could almost see being hunted and disappeared as a central theme, she confirms via email: “That is indeed a way to understand my work, the act of being possessed, by the past, by the present but also hunted by the threat of the future. A frenzy of memories that find ways to never be forgotten.”

Healing Power

Not being forgotten plays a major role in her film about Uzbek culture, in which the matriarchal society plays a major role in her films. She sees an important role in this for herself as an artist: “These times call for a healing power, and art has the healing power to recover from injuries and bring forth new ideas that shed a different light on reality.” In the video Qyrq Qyz (40 Girls) (2014) tells the story of a girl who was adored by her father in her youth and who grows up in luxury, but is nevertheless forced into marriage to a man of her father’s choice, destroying everything that is left of loving childhood memories. Her Five Lives (2020) provides a brief history of the role of women in the twentieth century. Surprisingly enough, there is no spoken word, only shown.

With Ismailova it is therefore not so much about what is said, but more about the form, which explains that there is a remarkable amount of silence in her work. In Zukhra (2013) for example, a woman is lying in bed, as a viewer you do not know whether she is lying on a death bed or whether she is held back by the past and the limitation imposed on women in society in the twentieth century. Some noise can be heard, but the painful silence is especially striking. “The silence in my work shapes feelings,” she explains.

Stories are needed

Since the independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the focus of artists from Uzbekistan has been on rediscovering their own identity, but that is now shifting, according to Ismailova: “I think there is more and more thought about how we a post-Soviet stagnation, as well as how to decolonize thought, is a fundamental process to see the future of the country before us. We must accept the Soviet language and cultural heritage of the time as part of the history of Central Asia.”

And that’s what Ismailova tries to do: she keeps the forgotten histories and traditions alive, but also finds new meanings: “We need stories as the backbone of our minds, images that can heal us in our dreams, but also have a beneficial effect.” when we are conscious. I believe that art can build bridges between the many worlds and dimensions we live in.”

In 2023 Eye Filmmuseum will present a major retrospective of her work