“When the Water Turns to Wind” is Saodat Ismailova’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, presented at Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The exhibition centers on a newly developed film installation of the same title, created specifically for the Portikus space. In it, Ismailova’s camera traces the contours of the Aral Sea — once one of the world’s largest inland bodies of water, now dramatically shrunk due to Soviet-era irrigation projects and extractivist policies, leaving behind the Aralkum Desert, toxic dust storms, salt flats, and desolate landscapes. The work shifts between former water-dominated environments (shaped by the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers) and the windswept, arid terrains that have replaced them, evoking processes of disappearance, transformation, and absence.
Rather than a conventional documentary, the installation offers a sensory, poetic, and immersive experience. It interweaves ecological loss (dried-up waters, extinct species, environmental degradation) with cultural and historical memory — lost knowledge from Soviet and post-Soviet ruptures — while touching on the broader imaginary of historical Turkestan. A custom soundscape, developed in collaboration with composer and sound artist Marc Parazon, enhances the atmospheric quality through field recordings and original compositions.
Ismailova’s approach counters purely exploitative views of the land by invoking ancestral rituals, myths, dreams, and traditional knowledge, suggesting alternative ways of relating to depleted environments. Absence serves as a central motif: vanished waters, erased histories, and silenced voices amid ongoing political, social, and ecological upheaval in Central Asia. The installation synthesizes the artist’s long-standing engagement with the region’s complex history, post-Soviet transformations, and intertwined human–environmental narratives.
Saodat Ismailova: When the Water Turns to Wind / Portikus Frankfurt/Main (Germany). March 24, 2026.
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