When liberation was an imposition: women's memory in Uzbekistan a century ago

BarcelonaHehujumThe "Cross-Blazing," which in Uzbek means "attack" or "offensive," was a campaign launched in 1927 by Soviet authorities with the aim of emancipating Muslim women in the Central Asian republics and promoting their integration into public life. One of the most visible aspects of this project was the requirement that women remove their veils, even at gunpoint if necessary. In Uzbekistan, it is estimated that on March 8, 1927, some 70,000 women participated in the mass burning of veils. "The Soviet authorities wanted to attack women and veils," states Uzbek artist and filmmaker Saodat Ismailova (Tashkent, 1981) on the occasion of the exhibition she is presenting at the Àngels Barcelona gallery (Pintor Fortuny, 27) until January 31, titled I compete with time.“I was still born in Soviet Uzbekistan, with the narrative that we owed our liberation and freedom to the Soviet Union,” says Ismailova.

As the exhibition title indicates, the works on display address the passage of time and how time is related to memory and the cultural heritage of Central Asia. Among them is the video titled Your right It is a "reaction" in the campaign ofhujumIt consists of a collage of film images and archival footage that highlight the inherent violence she believes exists in the obligation to remove the veil, and brings to light a series of forgotten Uzbek actresses. Likewise, images of a locomotive speeding along seem to evoke the disruptive impact of the Soviet Union. "These films stopped being shown because, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, they no longer fit the country's new narrative," says the artist, who has a very intimate connection to the works on display. "My father is a filmmaker. He studied for ten years in Moscow, and my mother's family suffered the most under Soviet religious repression," he explains. "I always try to be somewhere in the middle because both have made me who I am."

A copy ofYour right It is part of the TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza contemporary art collection. Furthermore, Ismailova recently received the first Moving Image Commission from the Han Nefkens Foundation, worth €86,000, to develop a new film project. The work resulting from the grant will be exhibited at the collaborating institutions and will become part of their collections: the Reina Sofía Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, and the Walker Art Center.

Women trapped between the state and the family

Hehujum It left a very deep mark. "After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all the narratives changed, because we began to have access to interviews with women who had gone through the process of removing their veils. You can't take a clear position, because they didn't understand what was being asked of them. You can't make great social changes without creating an educational program. Be emancipated," says Ismailova.

"As the title of the film says, if you want the gesture of removing the veil"If it happens of their own free will and with their right, it's necessary to educate women. That way, once they remove the veil, it's for good," he adds. On the other hand, the works with veils are a reaction to women who remove their veils: "When you ask them, they don't know why they're doing it. Is it just a matter of fashion? That seems horrible to me," the artist laments. But at the same time, he finds the return of the veil in places like Senegal, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia to be a "failure of education" and the result of a political agenda. "But these intellectuals presented it as a gesture that these women should arrive at of their own volition through education. Moreover, the people who imposed it were strange, outsiders. Imagine the local impact this caused. Women found themselves caught between the state and the traditional family, and some women were murdered within their families because they couldn't live with that situation, while others committed suicide," says the artist. Regarding education, the Soviet authorities eliminated local intellectuals, who had always been religious. "It was a religious world. The Soviets thought people were illiterate and that they would bring education. We had three languages: Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, but the Russians decided we were illiterate. And after eliminating the intellectuals, they seized the land and collectivized property," she explains.

Ismailova has been collecting these veils for many years, and she has used four of them in another of the exhibited works. "The material used to cover women actually comes from the Mongols. The veils served to protect them from eye pain. Then it became associated with Islam and acquired another meaning. And there is also another theory, which cannot be proven, according to which the use of the veil spread with the arrival of the Russians, because the local community wanted to hide the women from the Russians," says the artist.

Along with veils, another of the recurring themes of the exhibition are horses and their domestication. Time's tailsIt is made with horsehair, onto which Ismailova projects the faces of a string of girls she selected during a stay in Uzbekistan. "The women's faces appear on the surface of a veil that was never made, as if they were in front of the veil, not behind it," she explains.