Her Gaze: moving image from Central Asia is part of the International Nomadic Program 2024-2025 Repetition is a Form of Changing organized by League of Tenders. This is the first event of the First Season of this program, Her Right, devoted to decolonial approaches to feminism and questioning it from non-Western perspectives. In Her Right League of Tenders revisits the immersive exhibition International Feminist Art that was on display in Vleeshal in 1980 and which, despite proclaiming to present artists who ‘emerged in many places around the world’, focused on the western art scene.

For the first event, League of Tenders invited curator Dilda Ramazan and DAVRA Collective to curate a screening program with films by Central Asian women artists.

The program Her Gaze: moving image from Central Asia brings together works made by Central Asian women artists of different generations. The videos are realized roughly within the last four years and include a variety of subjects all focusing on female experiences emanating from this particular region of the world. These are women showing women, women making women seen, either when they are involved in the domestic day-to-day life (Aïda Adilbek, Madina Joldybek, Nazira Karimi); or when they are being deprived of agency and instrumentalized by the top-down political agendas (Saodat Ismailova, Zumrad Mirzalieva, Medina Bazargali); or when they simply go through odds of this life reflecting on it from their own bodily and mental perspectives (Daria Kim).

The use of archival materials and found footage in the works of Saodat Ismailova and Nazira Karimi allows these artists to formulate alternative narratives, challenging the historically dominating Western-centric patriarchal ones. Aïda Adilbek addresses a women’s household viewpoint focusing on qurt, or a Kazakh traditional dry fermented product, which preparation in the film becomes a recipe of kinship used to activate female family lineage. Women’s reproductive rights and a broader lack of visibility around the issue of maternity (both chosen and imposed) are central in the videos by Madina Joldybek and Zumrad Mirzalieva. The Uzbekistani Daria Kim unveils some personal struggles through her own sensory perspective which constitutes the key frame of her abstract piece. Concluding the program, Medina Bazargali’s film highlights the Kazakh traditional oral art form known as aitys. The artist reappropriates it in an attempt to decolonize this improvisation-based practice, restoring its subversive political potential.

Altogether, the selection aims to shed light on the rich and multifaceted Central Asian film production presenting female authors in accordance with the role that they perform today: the key actors of the region’s dynamic artistic scene.

The first screening was held at Vleeshal on May 24, and will continue in June and July at various locations in Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and others. In these places, local feminist collectives will meet to watch the films together and discuss the ideas behind them.

Previous dates and locations of the screenings:

Tashkent, Uzbekistan: June 18, 7pm, moc hub, Buyuk Turon 77

Organized in collaboration with the collectives Maqaal and Qizlar

Almaty, Kazakhstan: June 28, 6pm, bULt space, Gagarin Ave 83

Co-organized with bULt space community and curator Dilda Damazan

Upcoming dates and locations of the screenings:

Yerevan, Armenia: July 16

Co-organized with Typography Collective

Dushanbe, Tajikistan: August 1, 6pm, Monee Gallery, Dustii Khalkho 47

Co-organized with Monee Gallery and Ruyò Journal

All time is local time.

Online Screenings:

July 17–31 — EastEast will screen Aitys by Medina Bazarğali

August–September —  Ruyò Journal will screen the entire program

Dilda Ramazan is a Kazakhstan-born art worker specializing in Central Asian contemporary art. She curates exhibitions and publications, writes on art and is currently pursuing her PhD at Sorbonne Université. In 2020, together with her colleagues, she co-founded MATA, an all-female art collective based in Kazakhstan. Ramazan is also part of Beyond the post-soviet, a collective that produces and disseminates knowledge on regions previously referred to as ‘post-socialist’ countries.

DAVRA is a Central Asian research group initiated in 2021 by Saodat Ismailova. Its mission is to connect and develop the Central Asian art scene by fostering the dynamic exchange of experiences within the region as a priority.