Saodat Ismailova

àngels barcelona is pleased to participate in the 23rd edition of the artists’ video and media art fair, LOOP Barcelona, with Saodat Ismailova.

Her Five Lives, 2020

(ENG) A video essay Her Five Lives looks back at history of Uzbek cinema analyzing representation and transformation of Uzbek female heroines within a century (1925 – 2015). The video essay follows up major changes in the state ideology profiles in parallel with the region’s history and development of local cinema, focusing on how women were expected to be seen in the society and how female characters reflected political turnovers.

Her Five Lives consists of five chapters:

A victim of patriarchy (1925 – 1936) that depicts position of Uzbek woman in Muslim traditional society before the establishment of Soviet Union, A machine of ommunism (1940 – 1960) that portrays transformation of women involved into industrial and economic reforms in the country as a potential workforce, A thawed womanhood (1960 – 1985) that exposes the period marking freedom in the soviet republics following as Khrushyov’s Thaw, A perestroika libertine (1985 – 1995) that parallels to the collapse of the Soviet Union and transformation of the society where figure of a woman reflects a period when good and bad merged, hidden and shameful became norm of life, A confused independent (1996 – 2015) follows the independent period of Uzbekistan depicting women in self-reflection and being lost as into social so into personal lives.