MILAN.- From 12th September, 2024, until 12th January, 2025, Pirelli HangarBicocca presents “A Seed Under Our Tongue,” curated by Roberta Tenconi.

With new works commissioned by Pirelli HangarBicocca, the exhibition marks the first institutional survey of Saodat Ismailova in Italy. It presents works from her two-decade career, including films, sculptures, and installations, in a specially designed spatial environment. Focusing on the concept and implications of transmission—whether of knowledge, stories, memories or landscapes—the exhibition conjures up different narratives, creating a complex and multi-layered atmosphere. Visitors are immersed in the cultural, social and political realities of Central Asia through an intricate layering of memories, landscapes, personal and collective images and time.

Saodat Ismailova (Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 1981. Lives and works between Paris and Tashkent) is a filmmaker and artist from the first post-Soviet generation in Uzbekistan. Weaving memories, myths, rituals, and dreams into the tapestry of everyday life, her films explore her region’s historically rich and multi-layered culture, at the crossroads of different realities, migrations and colonial legacies. Drawing on her personal history, Ismailova delves into the collective dimension of memory and the global resistance to the impact of human activity on the environment. Her research spans ancestral knowledge and traditional practices, as well as more recent histories. For example, she incorporates archival film footage or textile elements from vernacular traditions that also allow for the continuity of artisanal activities that are in danger of disappearing. In doing so, Ismailova reframes the colonial past and the related issue of identity in the region by combining myths and animist practices with the dreams of the people who inhabit the lands.

“I think cinema is like a vessel that carries and remembers everything”, says Ismailova.

The title of the exhibition “A Seed Under Our Tongue” refers directly to the new works on view, including the newly edited film Arslanbob (2023-24) and the related sculptures, the golden seed of Amanat (2024) and the resin cast of a cave in The Mountain Our Bodies Emptied (2024). Drawing on an oral narrative—about a date seed hidden under the tongue and passed down through different epochs and people until it itself is transformed—the exhibition brings together twelve works, six films and seven sculptures that explore the question of transmission and the idea, in the artist’s words, “that we are responsible for the seven generations before us and the seven generations to come after us.”

Transmission, a recurring theme in Ismailova’s work, encompasses the risk of loss as well as the notions of cyclicality and circularity. The exhibition’s structure also reflects on, and revolves around these implications, incorporating the histories of Central Asia's two major rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya (Oxus and Jaxartes in Greek), whose waters once fed the now-arid Aral Sea. Designed in collaboration with Milan-based architectural studio Grace, the exhibition layout unfolds within two three-channel installations that envelope the space: Stains of Oxus (2016) and Arslanbob (2023-24), shot respectively on the banks of the Amu Darya and the area across the Syr Darya in present-day Kyrgyzstan. The show also metaphorically retraces the journey of the date seed, from its beginning in the mouth of a mythical figure named Arslanbob to its gift to the most important and best-known mystic of Central Asia, Akhmad Yassawi, who is also considered the founder of the Arslanbob walnut forest— emphasizing the contradictory nature of the transmission that allows a date to become a walnut.

The exhibition opens with Stains of Oxus (2016) a film that follows the course of the Amu Darya/Oxus River, depicting the transformation of its landscape with its drastic reduction during the Soviet irrigation plans, and collecting dreams of the people who live along its banks. In the region, dreams are a means of connecting with the ancestors and receiving their messages: “This topographical journey from the source to the end of the river raises questions about the Central Asian ecosystem and landscape, as well as the tradition of caring for and connecting with water bodies. The film poetically highlights the issue of water mismanagement in the region”, the artist explains.

Mirroring Stains of Oxus, at the opposite end of the exhibition is Arslanbob (2023-24), Ismailova’s latest film in progress shot in the eponymous walnut forest in southern Kyrgyzstan and on the adjacent Sulaiman-too Mountain, an ancient place of worship in Central Asia. This mystically charged site, characterized by pre-Islamic practices, is located in the fertile Ferghana Valley, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Literally translated as “the gate of the tiger”, Arslanbob also connects to other works in the exhibition, such as the sculpture A Guide (2024), a hybrid composed of glass bones from a human hand and of a tiger paw.

In the center of the room, two back-to-back projection areas loop four films. On one side, The Haunted (2017) is a symbolic and evocative encounter with the Turkestan tiger, extinct as a result of modern Soviet industrialization, becoming a metaphor for the richness of all the languages, memories and landscapes that are disappearing or being reshaped by systems of control and power. As a sacred archetype and messenger of the ancestors, the tiger lives on in the collective memory and in the dreams of people today. The film is paired with 18,000 Worlds (2023), based on the artist's editing of archival footage and the 12th-century Persian philosopher al-Suhrawardi's belief that we live in one of the 18.000 worlds that make up the universe—a concept passed down to Ismailova by her grandmother, a central figure in the artist’s upbringing. The film also explores the notion of resistance and hope in the face of inevitable globalization, presenting diverse worlds and voices that challenge its effects.

On the other side, Chillahona (2022) alternates with Two Horizons (2017). Premiered in Italy at the 2022 Venice Biennale, Chillahona is a vertical three-channel installation accompanied by a large embroidery. It is a modern reinterpretation of the Uzbek “cosmic” embroidery known as falak, which brings elements of the film into the textile. Drawn by Ismailova and executed by Madina Kasimbaeva, it thus represents a cosmology in dialogue with the images of the film, which addresses the themes of emptiness and disorder that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union during the perestroika period in Uzbekistan. The title refers to the traditionally highly charged number 40 and the female cathartic practice of silence for 40 days—Chilla means 40 in Persian. Poised between ancient myth and modern history, Two Horizons revolves around the idea of eternal life. The film interweaves the legend of a man, the first shaman named Qorqut, who tried to achieve immortality by defying gravity, with the Soviet Union’s space station of Baikonur, on the banks of the Syr Daria, where Yuri Gagarin first orbited the Earth in 1961.

Surrounding these films, along with the aforementioned Amanat, A Guide and The mountain our bodies emptied, are other new sculptures and interventions that develop and materialize the stories and themes seen in the moving images. The Haunted (2024), for example, visually interprets and translates the homonymous film from 2017 into a silk velour panel, engaging with local artisans and traditional art forms, creating collective bonds within the region—also underlining the artist's view of film as a weaving. In a new sculpture the artist uses horsehair, a distinctive material in her practice, also traditionally used in the region to mark the graves of saints and for women's veils. This is the central element of an 11-meter long piece where words by the young contemporary Uzbek poet Jontemir Jondor are projected. While for the new work that employs footage of Mount Suleiman-Too in 1928 projected onto 24 floating silk panels, Ismailova reflects on the format of cinema - the aspect ratio as well as the speed of 24 frames per second—and on the layered nature of stories, exploring what is lost or hidden beneath the visible surface.

Finally, the shape of Mount Sulaiman-Too, cut out and embroidered on the entrance curtain, welcomes visitors and becomes a lens through which to experience the exhibition’s journey. The same motif is echoed in the five seating volumes within the Shed space, which reflect the five peaks of the mountain. These shapes, drawn from the mountain’s orographic relief, evoke a sense of geological time and embody the tangible idea of layering and transmission through the ages, linking the works in the exhibition with the enduring legacy of the landscape.

Ismailova has exhibited at numerous major institutions including JOAN, Los Angeles (2024); Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains in collaboration with Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023); Center for Contemporary Arts, Tashkent (2019); Ilkhom Theatre, Tashkent (2018); Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromso, Norway (2017).

Her films and video installations have also been presented in international group exhibitions such as Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Fondazione in Between Art and Film, Venice (2024), Shanghai Biennale of Art, Sharjah Biennial (2023); Venice Biennale, documenta 15, Kassel, (2022); Meet Factory, Prague (2021); Para Site, Hong Kong, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2019); Lunds konsthall (2018); Yinchuan Biennale (2018).

In 2013 Ismailova was one of the artists representing Central Asia at the Venice Biennale, while in 2018 her live musical performance Qyrq Qyz premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. Her work is also widely recognized in the film industry and has been featured in festivals such as the Berlinale International Film Festival (2014) and Rotterdam International Film Festival (2005), among others. She has received numerous awards, including Eye Art & Film Prize, Amsterdam (2022); Documenta Madrid (2018), Golden Alhambra Award, Granada Cines del Sur Film Festival (2014), Tashkent International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2014), and Turin International Film Festival for Best Documentary (2004). In 2021, she founded the research group Davra, dedicated to the study, documentation and dissemination of Central Asian culture and knowledge.