Saodat Ismailova’s video works encompass themes of memory, spirituality, immortality, and extinction. Her new three-channel video Chillahona (2022) is filmed in Tashkent, in the underground cells of the same name, structures for practicing isolation and meditation often built next to the tombs of local saints in Central Asia. Today they are used by local people for self-isolation. Built in the shape of an eight-winged dome, the cell consists of three levels, which are mirrored by the three channels of the film. The first screen documents people visiting the chillahona; the second depicts the devotees carrying out their rituals and prayers; while the third traces the visit of a troubled young woman and her moment of self-isolation. Next to the videos hangs a Falak, a traditional Tashkent embroidery representing female cosmology and evoking protection, healing, and fertility, which the artist makes out of white fabric and illuminates with a coloured light. Working between the boundaries of real and imagined spaces, Ismailova draws from the specific cultural identity and history of Central Asia, often through ancestral knowledge and epic folklore stories featuring women as protagonists, to reveal a broader understanding of what it is to be human.
Liv Cuniberti
