The moment visitors step into Saodat Ismailova's "As We Fade" exhibition, they experience an almost heart-stopping sensation that immediately transports them away from the outside world. The Baltic gallery in Gateshead has curated a concise yet bold first solo exhibition in the UK featuring film works by the acclaimed Uzbek artist and filmmaker. This groundbreaking show proves to be simultaneously exhilarating, terrifying, and completely unforgettable.
The exhibition space itself becomes part of the artistic experience, designed as a dark room where four distinct works are carefully arranged around a central padded black square meant for sitting or lying down. This central void serves as a powerful reference point that reflects Ismailova's two-decade fascination with emptiness and absence. Her artistic preoccupation with the void stems from her formative years growing up during perestroika, the period of widespread political, social, and economic reform in the late 1980s when Soviet ideology began its dramatic collapse, leaving a significant cultural vacuum.
Ismailova's personal connection to cinema runs deep through her family history. Her father worked as a cinematographer, and she spent considerable time on film sets from a young age. The family lived in a building directly across from Uzbekistan's largest and oldest film studio, making cinema an integral part of her daily life. However, during the perestroika period, public film screenings came to an abrupt halt, creating another form of void in her cultural experience.
Each of the four film works presented in the exhibition creates its own rich universe, with layers of meaning and cultural allusions that resonate across the darkened space. These pieces communicate with each other across the central void through various sounds – they crackle, scream, and collide in an atmospheric symphony. The entire space feels elemental, with recurring images of fire, ice, and cascading water currents projected throughout, while the powerful sounds of desert wind create such an immersive experience that visitors can almost feel sand whipping against their necks.
The exhibition's centerpiece work, also titled "As We Fade," draws viewers in with its mesmerizing presentation. The piece is projected through 24 individual sheets of silk suspended in the air, creating a glittering, shimmering line that captures both light and shadow. The choice of silk carries deep significance, as Uzbekistan historically sat at the heart of the ancient Silk Road trade route connecting East and West. The number of silk panels deliberately mimics the traditional cinematic standard of 24 frames projected per second, creating a direct connection to film history.
The footage in "As We Fade" combines both found material and newly shot content, focusing on people performing sacred rituals on Sulaiman Too mountain. However, the images don't appear on every silk panel – they fade in and out, sometimes disappearing entirely. This deliberate choice reflects Ismailova's intention to make viewers consider not only what they see but also what remains hidden or absent from view.
References to the subconscious mind permeate throughout the exhibition, transforming the entire space into what feels like a psychic dreamscape. The mystical work "Melted Into the Sun" occupies the bottom area of the space, where visitors can sit on traditional cushions that once belonged to the artist's grandmother. This film takes a loose, lyrical approach to exploring Al-Muqanna, an 8th-century prophet-like figure, as faceless characters move through dusky landscapes under magenta skies.
The film incorporates elements reminiscent of ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) and video game aesthetics while avoiding getting too heavily focused on retelling local historical details. Instead, it poses universal questions through a narrator speaking in the distinctive uvular sounds of the Uzbek language, asking fundamental questions about who determines geographical and cultural directions like east and west.
"Swan Lake" stands out as perhaps the most powerful work in the exhibition, serving as a rapturous tribute to films from Central Asia created between 1988 and 2001, spanning from the collapse of the Eastern Bloc through the post-Soviet period. Ismailova's film demonstrates visceral, poetic, and avant-garde qualities while remaining intelligible to viewers. Though deeply rooted in a specific time and place, the work transcends geographical boundaries through its universal themes.
The film showcases Ismailova's orchestral command of cinematography, incorporating stunning footage from 28 different films made in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Scene after scene presents breathtaking beauty alongside violence, protest, disorientation, and anxiety. The imagery includes men, women, and children in dream states, a woman kissing a fish, a man licking a glass shard, and a woman bursting into flames. Particularly significant is the crackling footage of ballet dancers performing Swan Lake, which was broadcast continuously on Soviet state television following the deaths of leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko in the 1980s, and again when the Soviet Union finally collapsed.
"Swan Lake" weaves together complex ideas about psychic space, power structures, and propaganda techniques. The work simultaneously pulls viewers into its narrative while warning them about manipulation tactics. Ismailova drew inspiration from her childhood memories of watching Kashpirovsky, a Rasputin-like hypnotist figure, on Soviet state television. In 1989, he attempted mass hypnosis of the Soviet population – an excerpt of this actual broadcast is included in the work – representing the USSR's final desperate effort to save its crumbling regime and maintain population control.
The exhibition also explores the distinct male and female realms characteristic of Central Asian society through the work "Zukhra," which was previously shown at the 2013 Venice Biennale. This piece presents a daringly simple concept: a single, extended shot of a woman sleeping on a bed. The soundtrack combines archival news recordings with a narration of the legend of Venus. The woman eventually rises and walks out of the room, leaving viewers to contemplate the empty bed.
Despite its apparent simplicity, "Zukhra" perfectly captures the enormity and potential of a woman's seemingly passive domestic inner world. It represents the space where women are often confined but not diminished, suggesting the vast internal landscapes that exist within seemingly quiet moments. This work demonstrates how Ismailova consistently considers the parallel worlds of gender experience in Central Asian culture.
Visitors could easily spend hours absorbed in this carefully crafted world, as each film creates its own complete universe filled with rich layers and steeped in historical references. However, the exhibition prioritizes magic and emotional impact over clear political meanings or explicit historical context. "As We Fade" ultimately becomes a meditation on how people hold onto the past and learn to let go, leaving viewers staring into darkness while wondering what new possibilities might emerge from the void. The exhibition continues at the Baltic gallery in Gateshead until June 7.
