THEMATIC ACTIVITIES | How Changing History Changes the World

Focus areas

An interdisciplinary activity that can cut across a range of different subjects, such as civics, history, geography, philosophy, human sciences, and art history.

Activities

Saodat Ismailova (b. 1981, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) is an artist and filmmaker. Through her films, installations, and sculptures, she explores the impact of human activities on the environment, as well as on cultural and scenic treasures. Her work examines the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds, while examining various ways of transmitting knowledge. By intertwining moving images with traditions, legends, dreams, and historical events from Central Asia, she creates immersive soundscapes that preserve the collective memory of the past, in order to safeguard both the present and the future. This reflects a widely held belief in Central Asia that each person is “responsible for the seven generations that came before and the seven that will follow”.

The students will be divided into groups and will explore the exhibition space on their own, guided by key words that point to the historical, social, political and environmental themes in Ismailova’s works. The students will then come together to share their reflections and the reasons for their decisions to pair the works and the keywords provided: based on the considerations they offer, the visit to the exhibition will be reconstructed through exchanges of thoughts and peer-to-peer ideas.