Saturday, September 12, 2026 at 12:00 AM to Saturday, November 28, 2026 at 11:59 PM
JOAN, Los Angeles
Saodat Ismailova, Melted into the Sun, 2024, video still. Courtesy of the artist. Saodat Ismailova Davra Western Front Following artist and filmmaker Saodat Ismailova’s 2024 exhibition Other Time and Davra Research Collective at JOAN (February 22–March 30, 2024), our collaboration with the artist continues with Other Light in Vancouver, presented at the invitation of Western Front and opening September 12. Other Light brings together two films, Melted into the Sun (2024) and To the Throat of the Sun (2026), in a site-specific installation exploring light as a political and spiritual force through which history, memory, and myth are continually remade. Rooted in the layered histories of Central Asia, Ismailova’s work draws on oral traditions and cosmologies to trace ancestral knowledge that persists through political and environmental upheaval. The exhibition will be on view at Western Front from September 12 through November 28, 2026, accompanied by a commissioned text by Quinn Latimer and public programs to be announced. Learn more about the exhibition here. Saodat Ismailova is a filmmaker and artist based between Paris, France and Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her work explores the relationships between memory, perception, mythology, and the moving image. Drawing on the intellectual and oral traditions of Central Asia, alongside dreams, rituals, and historical archives, she investigates how forms of knowledge survive erasure and political rupture, shaping individual and collective consciousness across generations. Working across film, installation, sculpture, and sound, Ismailova creates works in which documentary and myth, history and lived experience, the visible and the invisible converge, treating memory not as a record of the past but as a living force that continually reshapes reality. In 2021, she co-founded Davra, a collective dedicated to fostering artistic research and cultural exchange across Central Asia. In 2022, Ismailova participated in both the 59th Venice Biennale and documenta fifteen. She is the recipient of The Eye Art & Film Prize (2022), Foundation Pernod Ricard’s Nouveau Programme Award (2025), and the Art Basel Golden Award (2025). Presented and produced by Western Front. Curated by JOAN Executive Director & Curator Suzy Halajian.