Saodat Ismailova: As We Fade

Kunsthalle Lissabon presents “As We Fade”, a solo exhibition by Uzbek filmmaker and visual artist Saodat Ismailova. The exhibition unfolds as a two-channel film installation centred on Sulaiman-Too Mountain in Osh, Kyrgyzstan — one of Central Asia’s oldest pilgrimage sites. Through a sequence of archival and contemporary footage projected onto twenty-four silk panels, Ismailova reflects on the mountain’s transformation from sacred site to state-controlled monument, tracing how memory, ritual, and spirituality endure through cycles of political and cultural change.

Accompanying the film, the sculpture “The Mountain Our Bodies Emptied” reproduces a LiDAR scan of Tamchi Tomar Cave, revealing the physical imprints left by centuries of healing gestures. Together, the works consider how sacred places absorb histories of devotion, loss, and resilience, and how acts of remembrance resist erasure over time.