ARLES.- LUMA Arles opened Amanat, The Sacred Forest, an exhibition by Uzbek artist Saodat Ismailova (b. 1981). Ismailova works across film, installation, archives, and sound, exploring the cultural and spiritual histories of Central Asia through myth, oral tradition, ritual, and lived experience.
The exhibition brings together new and early works by Ismailova, centered on a recently commissioned film Amanat (2026), developed in collaboration with Swiss Institute, New York and Kunsthalle Bern. This partnership reflects a shared commitment to supporting new artistic production and fostering international exchange.
The exhibition largely revolves around the walnut forest of Arslanbob, which is named after a mystic said to have carried a date seed beneath his tongue during two centuries of wandering. According to local legend, a seven-year-old boy asked to have what belonged to him and the old man entrusted him with the seed.
The child would become the great twelfth-century mystic Ahmad Yasawi. From this seed, the story goes, the walnut forest was born. In local belief, its walnuts possess hallucinatory properties. Today, Arslanbob is simultaneously a sacred ground, living archive, economic resource, and contested territory, shaped by walnut harvesting, logging, climate change, and competing claims over preservation and use.
The recently commissioned film Amanat follows three male figures across three generations during the autumn walnut harvest in the forest of Arslanbob. The elder figure carries a date seed, embodying memory; the middle-aged man breaks open walnuts, bearing the present’s responsibilities, while the child’s hands remain empty. As they fall asleep in the forest, one dream fades into another. The word amanat comes from amānah, which can be translated as “trust” in Arabic, and occurs in Farsi and Turkic languages. In this context, it denotes an inheritance that one does not own, but instead temporarily holds and is obliged to protect. It reflects on the fragile passage of responsibility between bodies, generations, and worlds.
The exhibition features two more newly commissioned films that explore the Arslanbob forest through a distinct lens. Set in the forest, Seven Sleepers (2026) draws from a version of the story The People of the Cave [Ashāb al-Kahf], where seven young believers, fleeing persecution, take refuge in a cavern and fall into a miraculous sleep that lasts centuries before awakening. Sharshara (2026), which means “waterfall” in Uzbek, depicts a sacred cascade filmed across three seasons, and shows in a sequence a woman shouting, venerating the water, and sharing what remains unspoken to humans. Also in the exhibition, an earlier film, named after the forest, Arslanbob (2023), emerged from Ismailova’s first journey there, capturing the landscape at dusk with oral testimonies and visuals from 13th-century cosmological manuscripts.
Three small sculptures, co-commissioned with Swiss Institute and Kunsthalle Bern, follow the mythic life of seeds at the heart of the legend of Arslanbob. Amanat, entrusted evokes the date seed that, according to legend, was carried in Arslanbob’s mouth and gave rise to the walnut forest. Amanat, held presents an actual walnut, suspended from a delicate golden rod. Amanat, received has the shape of an unidentified seed, bringing together traces of several seeds to create a hybrid form.
The Haunted (2017) traces the vanished Turan tiger, following its disappearance from Central Asian landscapes and its afterlife in stories, memories, and dreams. In Threshold (2026), pulsing neon behind silk suggests an unenterable passage, while the phrase “You knew my ancestors, and I knew yours” [Men seni ajdodlaringini bilardim, sen esa menikini] links humans and non-humans’ memories. Unfading (2026) combines dark horsehair with neon script, reading “Give me back my knowledge” [Mening Ilimimni qaytar], mourning the cultural and ecological knowledge bound to the tiger and Central Asia’s fading traditions.
The exhibition forms a meditation on transmission and disappearance. In Ismailova’s practice, cinema, sound, and sculpture are not simply media of representation, but living moments of attention. Her work allows places to speak, histories to endure, and fragile worlds to remain perceptible.
