Saodat Ismailova

Saodat Ismailova is an Uzbek filmmaker and artist who came of age in the post-Soviet era and has established an artistic life between Paris and Tashkent while remaining deeply engaged with her native region as a source of creative inspiration. After graduating in film making from the Tashkent State Institute of Arts, she began a residency at Fabrica, a research and communication center in Italy. Since then she shares her time between Tashkent, Uzbekistan and Paris, France. She first achieved international recognition with the release of Zukhra, a video installation that recounts the history of Uzbekistan through a state of sleeping character. In 2014, she premiered her first feature film, 40 Days of Silence, at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it was nominated for best debut film. She then went on to make a number of short films while at the Norwegian Office for Contemporary Art and , a French contemporary arts studio.

Ismailova has worked to develop and promote Central Asian cinema, both in Uzbekistan and Europe. In 2019, she put together an educational program CCA LAB with the support of ACDF on contemporary art in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, where she also exhibited solo exhibition Q’org’on Chirog; and in 2021, she established the DAVRA collective, in order to research and publicise Central Asian culture.

In 2024 she participated at Nebula exhibition during 60th Venice Biennale of Arts where she presented Melted into the Sun commissioned by Fondazione In Between Art and Film. She has received Foundation Pernod Ricard’s Nouveau Programme support and became a golden medallist of Art Basel as an emerging artists in 2025.

Biography Early life and education Saodat Ismailova was born in 1981, in Tashkent, the capital of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. In 2008, she formed the Central Asian production company MAP.

In 2017, she took up a residency at the (OCA), producing the short film The Haunted, That year also saw her multimedia performance Qyrq Qyz, which retold a Central Asian legend of 40 warrior women,

In 2019 she put together an educational program CCA Lab on contemporary art in Tashkent at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Tashkent (CCAT) that lasted one year. The same year she exhibited a solo show "Syncretic verses" in Ilkhom theatre, and later the same year Q’org’on Chirog at CCAT; She is also a receiver of Magnum Foundation, Counter Histories Program support, 2022.

She received Foundation Pernod Ricard’s Nouveau Programme support as well as Han Nefkens Foundatio Prize in collaboration with the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), the Singapore Art Museum (Singapore), and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) in 2024 . She participated at Nebula exhibition during 60th Venice Biennale of Arts where she presented Melted into the Sun commissioned by Fondazione In Between Art and Film. The same year, she had a solo show at Pirelli HangarBicocca “A Seed Under Our Tongue,” the first survey of Saodat Ismailova's work in Italy. She has received Foundation Pernod Ricard’s Nouveau Programme support and became a golden medallist of Art Basel as an emerging artists in 2025. By invitation of Kunsten festival des Arts, Ismailova has presented newly commissioned performative work Arslanbob: The healing forest, 2025.

Her films are in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, and the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, Tate Modern, UK, FRAC Corsica, TBA 21, Museum of Modern Art, Almaty, Tselliny Centre for Contemporary Culture, Almaty, M KHA, Antwerp, Victoria & Alberts, UK, Pinault Collection, CNAP and others.

Style Ismailova's films focus on Central Asian history,