The Black Box, a small-scale theater/cinema, located in hall B1, has been created to provide a space for watching films together on a single screen. While a number of films use poetic language or mythical characters to excavate the past and unfold the stories embedded in places and histories, others draw from themes ranging from ancient Arabic poetry to the science of the Amazonian Forest, the migration of birds, plantations, and crypto mining. The lines of inquiry pursued in each film contextualize the impact of hegemonic structures within a range of geographies, while offering windows into alternate imaginaries. Dedicated to the possibilities of the moving image, this panel invites film curators and scholars to respond to the film program of After Rain, in conversation with two of the participating artists.
Saodat Ismailova is a filmmaker and artist who came of age in the post-Soviet era in Central Asia. She graduated from Tashkent State Art Institute in Uzbekistan and Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts in France. Drawing on the cultural identities and vernacular histories of Central Asia, Ismailova’s films meditate on memory, spirituality, immortality, and extinction, frequently based around oral stories in which women are the lead protagonists, and exploring systems of knowledge suppressed by globalized modernity. She initiated Davra research collective in Central Asia, 2021. In 2022 she participated in 59th Biennale of Venice and presented new work at documenta fifteen. In 2022, she received The Eye Art & Film Prize, Amsterdam. Saodat Ismailova is a participating artist in the DCAB 2024, her film 18 000 Worlds (2024) is screened daily as part of the film program in the Black Box in exhibition hall B1.
Dirk Snauwaert is founding director of WIELS, a position he has held since 2004. Before joining WIELS, he was co-director of the Institut d’art contemporain Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, in France; director of the Munich Kunstverein from 1996 to 2001, and curator for contemporary art at the PSK/PBAn Centre for Fine Arts Bozar, Brussels, from 1989 to 1995. He has organized and coordinated numerous monographic and thematic exhibition, and he also lectures and publishes regularly on art and visual culture.
Akram Zaatari is a Lebanese artist who produces videos, installations of photographic material, and books on a range of interconnected themes, subjects and practices related to excavation, political resistance, and the production and circulation of images in times of war. Zaatari has played a critical role in developing the formal, intellectual and institutional infrastructure of Beirut’s contemporary art scene. As co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation, he has actively contributed to the discourse on the preservation of photographs and archival practice. Zaatari is a member of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation’s Curatorial Advisory Committee.
Ala Younis is an artist with curatorial, film, and publishing projects. Using objects, film and printed matter, she often seeks instances where historical and political events collapse into personal ones. She holds a BSc. in Architecture from the University of Jordan and MRes in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is co-founder of the publishing initiative Kayfa ta, co-head of the Berlinale’s Forum Expanded, artistic director of the Academy of the Arts of the World (Cologne), and a research scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, at New York University Abu Dhabi. She was co-artistic director of the Singapore Biennale 2022.
