Saodat Ismailova: tigers, silk, cotton and the Uzbek cosmic embroidery

Working with dreams, oral narratives, silk, and glass, filmmaker and artist Saodat Ismailova’s work at Pirelli Hangar Bicocca explores the entangled histories of Central Asia

Saodat Ismailova in conversation with Lampoon on material and craft

In the darkness of A Seed Under Our Tongue at Pirelli HangarBicocca, a taut piece of fabric is presented in tension, both suspended from the ceiling and anchored to the ground. At first glance, it is unclear if this is a textile or another screen that will present Saodat Ismailova’s films. Approaching the piece, the work begins to move – colored light shifts and pulses over the images of the moon cycle, snake, bird, and womb that come to being through the stitches carefully placed across its surface.

This embroidery piece, accompanied by a three-channel film, makes up the multimedia work Chillahona (2022). In processing the period of perestroika in Central Asia, Ismailova worked closely with artisan Madina Kasimbaeva to reinterpret the Uzbek “cosmic” embroidery known as falak. Speaking on the power of this technique, Ismailova notes, “Women who designed embroideries were seen in society as shamans. It was about creation – an act where one became respected and also feared because she had made something new. This practice disappeared during Soviet times.”

At her show in Pirelli HangarBicocca, Ismailova makes tangible and visible the works that once existed only in whispers—passed through generations, not as formalized knowledge found in books, but as skills transferred from hand to hand, through working palms. In the work exhibited, Ismailova creates containers for Central Asian histories and ancestral practices that were challenged by Soviet occupation.

Pirelli HangarBicocca’s commissioned works for A Seed Under Our Tongue

In her interview with Lampoon, Ismailova (b. 1981, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) reflects on the various forms her oeuvre takes. The exhibition, featuring new works commissioned by Pirelli HangarBicocca, includes sculptural pieces that stand in dialogue with her films. In her first Italian survey, Ismailova continues her exploration of materials and historical techniques—cotton, silk, horsehair, embroidery—that are rooted in Central Asian culture. These materials not only preserve, but also generate a conversation, between past and present, the conceptual and the material.

Often, Ismailova grapples with the impact of Soviet rule on Central Asia, where colonization erased, transformed, and disrupted indigenous cultures. This entangled history raises poignant questions about the conception of Central Asia: in a region where identity is continuously renegotiated, what materials—whether spiritual, visible, or tangible—constitute reality? 

The craft of embroidery and light

Chillahona documents one of the oldest underground cells in Tashkent, where people isolate themselves for forty day periods. The film follows a woman in this cell as she prays and sifts through memories of perestroika, searching for answers to a time of upheaval. Both the film and the accompanying embroidery explore this space—somewhere suspended between the physical and the spiritual—where answers aren’t found in concrete facts but in mystic, ancestral truths that linger in these ancient, sacred sites.

“I went to Kasimbaeva with a drawing [for the falak] and asked her to make her version of it—I thought her interpretation would become our collaboration. In response, she said, ‘No. Go make a drawing, and I will do exactly that.’” Ismailova expresses admiration for Kasimbaeva’s mastery of embroidery saying, “I hope we will arrive at a point where the process will be more collaborative between us… something that is a hybrid between her world and mine.”

Silk bakhmal velour from the Margilan valley of Uzbekistan

In The Haunted (2017), the first film visible upon entering the space, Ismailova memorializes the extinct Turan tiger. Now, the tiger exists only in careful taxidermy and in dreams—a creature sustained by collective memory. In a traditional bakhmal velour panel commissioned by Pirelli HangarBicocca, Ismailova extends this narrative, creating a tangible form that evokes the tiger’s presence through a glowing silk tapestry of greens, beiges, and reds, which forms the tiger’s eye. This ode to the Turan tiger gazes down with a poignant reminder of its absence.

In this hanging work, which shares the title of the video piece, the tactility of the material contrasts with the ephemeral nature of video art. While the 2017 film offers moving images connected to the time-based representation of the tiger, the physicality of the velour panel anchors these ideas in tangible space. The execution of the velour panel by Uzbek craftsmen brings this work to life materially, complementing how the oral narratives and video footage create a more spiritual representation of the tiger.

Suspended horsehair of the Uzbek chachvon veil

In the same line of vision there’s Talosh (2024) where a poem of the same title from the young contemporary Uzbek writer, Jontemir Jondor, travels across a wave of suspended horse hair. The jet-black, almost ink-like quality of the hair, nearly invisible in the dark space of the exhibition, evokes a ghostly presence. Once the material of the chachvon, a traditional veil worn by Uzbek women in the early twentieth century, it holds great significance in the cultural memory. 

This material has been a recurrent presence in Ismailova’s work. It appeared in What was my name? (2020) which used the hair as sheath through which to view neon lettering. Ismailova remarks, “I have been creating a collection of the chachvon. The materiality of the veil has a deepness. At first glance, it seems hard, but then at the same time, you can bend it. I tried to retrace the weaving practice of it, but it’s gone. It’s finished.”

Ismailova discusses trying to derive a type of weaving process to work the hair into a formed structure, but then admits, “I have not yet arrived at that process. When I hung the horsehair as it appears in the exhibition space, I felt it already had an organic presence. It’s a material that’s very alive.” Using the glowing words of Jondor, the artist further animates the undulating wisps of hair. 

Jontemir Jondor’s poems projected in light

Within the exhibition, the poetry remains intentionally untranslated. “Translation of poetry is so complicated. I translated Jondor’s piece, but when I read it back in English, it didn’t speak to me…[Talosh] felt like two different poems. At that point, I thought it’s just as good to leave these words and thoughts unexplained. You don’t have to explain everything: This is also a statement.”

Ismailova’s collaboration with young artists reflects her forward-looking vision. She references the notion of caring for both the preceding seven generations and the seven generations to come. On working with Jondor, she states, “When I was thinking about [the sculpture, Talosh], I was looking at the myths referenced in A Seed Under Our Tongue. When I was reading traditional poems related to the myth, I felt like they threw the audience back into the past. It framed everything in this exhibition as ‘finished’. That’s why I worked with a young poet – someone who continues this tradition of Uzbek poetic language but challenges it with contemporary reality.”

Cotton and Soviet Central Asia

In her larger commitment to cultural preservation in the region she collaborates continuously with DAVRA—a collective of young women from Central Asia that she formed as part of her project for documenta fifteen in 2021. In 2024, at the Biennale Matter of Art in Prague, DAVRA exhibited Taming Waters and Women in Soviet Central Asia. With members Madina Joldybek and Zumrad Mirzalieva, the work explores cotton production’s impact on women laborers under Soviet rule.

“Cotton is a very special story. When we speak about silk, it’s slightly different because silk was always kept in a traditional form. Silk is protected by families while cotton and its production was imposed. With the arrival of Tsarist Russia, they were trying to create a cotton industry. In that regard, cotton is very much related to the recent history of the region. In the case of Taming Waters and Women in Soviet Central Asia, it exists as a study of rivers through building a parallel with the women and of course, there is the cotton that bridges the two.”

“The water was sacrificed for cotton: water and the women,” Ismailova pauses then changes course saying, “I wouldn’t say sacrifice, but maybe it’s even more complex than that. Let’s say adapted, re-manipulated, re-thought. It became a matter of how to make the industrial practice of cotton cultivation accepted and part of the identity of the country” It’s this fluid and continual pursuit to understand the role of women in Central Asia that underpins much of Ismailova’s work.

Contributor Mirzalieva, who photographed contemporary cotton laborers working in Uzbekistan, shares this careful eye for history building. Reflecting on her process in creating the landscape photography featured in the work, she notes “I originally thought to do portraits of the female cotton pickers at work. I did a series of a few portraits, but then I thought it was a bit too speculative and performative for the installation. The women were very open to the photos. They were kind and smiling: it was their natural expression… But I didn’t want to bring my own gaze into cotton picking and risk imposing it on the workers.”

Date seeds, walnuts, and 18k gold

The exhibition concludes with an 18k golden date seed, set in stark contrast to the expansive three-channel work Arslanbob (2023–ongoing), which depicts the forest in southern Kyrgyzstan of the same name. This forest, dense with walnut trees, is known for its hallucinatory effects due to its emission of more carbon dioxide than oxygen. The golden date seed, positioned facing the walnut forest, evokes the legend of the mystic Arslanbob, who passed a date seed he had kept under his tongue for years to his successor. According to the legend, this successor would use the seed to grow the vast Arslanbob forest.

Ismailova frames her exhibition with this tale of a single date seed that can transmogrify into a vast walnut forest. Through this narrative, she points to materials as more than just historical artifacts; they are transformative substances with the ability to hold many seemingly contradictory truths. These materials can tell the unwritten stories that float uncaptured through time. They can record the sites of struggle for women and hold the memory of a cultural craft forced to mute itself during occupation. By embracing tangible mediums and material culture, Ismailova deepens the narrative of Central Asia, demonstrating how these materials play a crucial role in shaping and constituting the region’s cultural reality.

Saodat Ismailova: A Seed Under our Tongue at Pirelli HangarBicocca

From September 12th, 2024, to January 12th, 2025, Pirelli HangarBicocca will present A Seed Under Our Tongue, the first Italian survey of Saodat Ismailova (b. 1981, Tashkent, Uzbekistan), a leading contemporary artist and filmmaker living between Tashkent and Paris. Curated by Roberta Tenconi, the exhibition highlights Ismailova’s films and installations exploring themes of collective memory, colonialism, and Central Asian histories. 

Annalise June Kamegawa