Saodat Ismailova: Melted Into the Sun
Saodat Ismailova: *Melted into the Sun* is Saodat Ismailova’s first major solo museum presentation in the United States. The exhibition brings together film, installation, archival material, and objects from the National Museum of Asian Art’s collections to explore Central Asia’s traditions, oral histories, landscapes, and complicated modern history.
Ismailova’s works move between dream and reality, combining images, sounds, textures, text, archival footage, and newly filmed material. Her subjects range from the Amu Darya River and ancient ruins to Soviet-era power stations. Drawing on ancient Iranian and Islamic philosophies as well as her family stories, she considers cyclical time, memory, environmental transformation, and the ways the past shapes life in an unstable world.
The exhibition includes the 35-minute, single-channel video with sound *Melted into the Sun* (2024). Its imagery moves through blackened industrial debris, arid landscapes, rivers, forests, ruins, reflective mirrors, and water infrastructure. A recurring veiled figure and images of sunlight connect the film to the story of al-Muqanna, an eighth-century leader in Central Asia known as the “veiled prophet.” The film’s themes include resistance to centralized power, hierarchy, land extraction, and the possibility of creating a more just society.
Nineteenth-century Uzbek ikats from the museum’s collections are displayed alongside Ismailova’s works, evoking place and cultural resilience. The artist also selected historic objects from the museum’s collections of art from Central and Western Asia, including a fourteenth-century painting of a mysterious talking tree and a nineteenth-century begging bowl. These objects reflect the traditions, myths, memories, and ways of seeing that inform her practice.
When: June 13–November 29, 2026
Venue: National Museum of Asian Art, East Building, Gallery 28
Collection areas: Arts of the Islamic World and Contemporary Art
Artist: Saodat Ismailova, born 1981
Featured work: *Melted into the Sun*, 2024; single-channel video with sound; 35 minutes
Commissioning and credit: The video was commissioned by Fondazione In Between Art Film and Batalha Centro de Cinema Porto, and is presented courtesy of Saodat Ismailova.
Artist-selected objects: Historic works from the museum’s collections of art from Central and Western Asia, including a fourteenth-century painting of a talking tree and a nineteenth-century begging bowl.
Accessibility: Exhibition wall and case text is available online in a resizable format and through a screen reader. Descriptive transcripts are also available for the video.
Tickets: Price not available