The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art has opened Saodat Ismailova’s first major solo museum presentation in the United States. Through film, photography and archival material, the exhibition explores Central Asia’s landscapes, layered histories and cultural memory.
History as layers, not a straight line
The exhibition runs from June 13 through November 29. It includes the video works 18,000 Worlds, Her Right and Melted into the Sun, alongside the photographic series The Letters.
18,000 Worlds places documentary footage of 1920s Central Asia beside present-day landmarks such as Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome and Uzbekistan’s Grand Solar Furnace. Her Right, a montage about sacrifices made for the freedom of Uzbek women, is projected onto horsehair.
Reimagining al-Muqanna
The title film revisits the enigmatic eighth-century figure al-Muqanna, known as the Veiled One. Ancient ruins and modern industrial landscapes meet in a work about belief, power and the unstable nature of historical memory.
Ismailova also selected two 19th-century Uzbek ikat textiles from the museum’s collection. Their presence links cinema and weaving as practices that assemble fragments into complex patterns of meaning.
