Saodat Ismailova: A Seed Under Our Tongue

From September 12, 2024 to January 12, 2025, Pirelli HangarBicocca presents A Seed Under Our Tongue, the first Italian survey of Saodat Ismailova, who works at the intersection of cinema, sound and visual art.

Her films and installations, with their striking iconography and hypnotic narratives, evoke the power of nature, the legacy of colonization, and the delicate relationship between humanity and the environment. Exploring collective memory, ancestral knowledge and the representation of femininity, they draw on the socio-political and cultural heritage of her native Central Asia to reflect on universal values.

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.

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–ongoing) and the related sculptures, the golden seed of The Seed Under Our Tongue (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 seven 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.”

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.

The Catalogue
Coinciding with the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca, a comprehensive monograph on the artist, edited by Roberta Tenconi, will be published in the fall of 2024. Tracing Ismailova’s practice from a variety of perspectives, the volume will include essays and thematic contributions from international scholars and critics such as Erika Balsom, lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College, London; Anselm Franke, Head of Masters of Arts in Art Education Curatorial Studies at Zurich University of the Arts; Marcella Lista, curator at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dilda Ramazan, curator, researcher and Davra member; and Rolando Vàsquez, Professor of Post and Decolonial Theory at the University of Amsterdam. In addition to an extensive iconographic apparatus of both archival images and photographic documentation of the exhibition, the book also features unpublished texts written by Saodat Ismailova for the films The Haunted, Chillahona and 18,000 Worlds, an introductory insight by Roberta Tenconi, and short essays on the exhibited works by Chiara Lupi, Tatiana Palenzona and Teodora di Robilant.

Pirelli HangarBicocca is a non-profit foundation dedicated to producing and promoting contemporary art. It was conceived and is supported by Pirelli. Established in 2004, Pirelli HangarBicocca has become a benchmark institution for the international art community, local public and region. It is a museum that is free of charge, accessible and open, and a place for experimentation, research and dissemination, where art is a point of reflection on the most topical themes of contemporary culture and society. It caters to a broad and diverse public with a programme of major solo exhibitions by both Italian and international artists, a multi-disciplinary program of accompanying events and in-depth discussions, theoretical and informational publications, and educational courses. A team of museum facilitators is on hand at all times to help the public connect with the art. Vicente Todolì has been the foundation’s artistic director since 2012. Situated in a former industrial building, once a locomotive manufacturing facility, Pirelli HangarBicocca occupies 15,000 square metres, making it one of the largest single-level exhibition spaces in Europe. This vast area comprises the Shed and Navate spaces, which are used for temporary exhibitions, and the permanent display of Anselm Kiefer’s The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004-2015. This monumental installation with seven reinforced concrete towers has become one of the most iconic works in Milan.