Sabina Khorramdel
Where Memory and Waters Return:
A Dialogue with Nazira Karimi
23 August 2024
Sabina Khorramdel
Where Memory and
Waters Return:
A Dialogue with
Nazira Karimi
23 August 2024
HAFTA installation view; “Foreigners Everywhere” la Biennale di Venezia
About HAFTA
by Dilda Ramazan:
HAFTA is a seven-part monumental video piece by the Tajikistan-born and Kazakhstan-based artist Nazira Karimi commissioned specifically for the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia “Foreigners Everywhere” curated by Adriano Pedrosa. The film addresses the idea of extinction and how it could be translated through the continuous episodes of the colonisation of Central Asia which caused the endangerment and the almost disappearance of water resources, fauna, and local languages. Approaching such a theme, Karimi decided to interweave the region's collective history with that of her own family who had to flee their native Kazakhstan in the 1930s searching for rescue from the violent modernity.
Technically, HAFTA is composed of seven screens each of which pictures one of the seven mothers from Karimi’s lineage. Some of their biography-related facts were not known to the artist, which resulted in the filmmaker inventing and imagining what could be the life of her ancestors. When history and archives fail, one has to rely on imagination and fiction.
To produce the video, Karimi embarked on a journey with her mother, Mariam, to whom one of the chapters of HAFTA is dedicated. A Kazakh woman born in Tajikistan, where her predecessors fled, Mariam had to flee again back to Kazakhstan with young Nazira and her elder sister Halima. So when making the film, Nazira travelled with her mama from Kazakhstan to the country of her birth then returned home. She thus directly linked the physicality of her motherland’s landscapes with their lost waters and dried-out steppes to the virtuality of her moving image.
The seven video channels composing the installation are disposed in such a way so that the viewer can witness the coming back of waters to Central Asia through the unfolding of HAFTA. Justice is being done to the women who made the artist, preceding her, and the broken connections are being healed and restored. Waters refill the places they fled all like women of the Karimi family find their ways back to their homes. A better future is now possible.
working process 1
The journey alongside Nazira and Mariam was accompanied by Sabina Khorramdel, a friend of the artist, co-founder of Ruyò, and co-producer of Hafta. Sabina and Nazira spoke about the experience of creating Hafta, the stories and blessings encountered along the way, and the themes of environment, extinction, and grief in the region.
Sabina- How did the concept of seven generations of men in Central Asia translate into seven women before you?
Nazira- Generally speaking, my work was always centred on Central Asian women. So it appeared naturally. The traditional knowledge of jety ata (seven grandfathers) is a very popular concept circling in Kazakhstan when discussing the genealogy trees. And lately, the conversation on jety apa (seven grandmothers) has gained popularity. It’s something I’ve also encountered on social media, like Instagram, where women share photos of their genealogy trees (jety ata) in their living rooms and add the names of women. Such contemplations are floating in the air of Kazakhstan. Möldir Qarabaikyzy recently held a solo exhibition called Jety Apa. You can see it also in the work of Ermina Takenova, which has an illustration of seven women whose braids are intertwined. I want to get a tattoo of it and Ermina kindly gave her permission. It also symbolises the way I think about my work. The most important thing to note is that it is not an isolated instance for me to contemplate about seven women. Guzel Zakir's recent film Ili Ili portrays five women, which is not connected to jety apa but still represents its reflections and echo. The stories of the lives of women expose the environment around them.
Sabina- It’s also so interesting biologically. A child has a stronger connection with a mother because she birthed them, whereas they don't know who their father is unless their mother tells them about him.
Nazira- Also, I didn’t get to experience having grandparents as my parents had my sister and me later in life; their parents were already gone. I grew and witnessed women's relationships with their grandmothers and realised that it’s such an important element in the development of a woman, whereas I lacked that contact. So I imagined the lives of my great-grandmothers through Hafta.
Sabina- In the process of making Hafta, you reach those aspects within yourself and process that absence. I’m curious about your mother's role in the film's production, how she approached your idea, and the encounters you’ve had during filming, which were all arranged through her.
Nazira- Technically, the film started with the video made during the Fabrica residency in Treviso, Italy. Back then, I filmed my mother and aunts for two weeks. My family is very supportive. She was already familiar with my idea. I developed it and told her how I would like to expand it by adding elements of grief and ancient places of sorrow, funeral songs, and prayers. As I developed a route, I couldn’t decide whom to travel with. So I invited my mother, who, in four days, reached out to her friends and family to organise the journey. I travelled with her through her eyes and through her people.
working process 2
Sabina- In your film, the sound element was the cries of mourning women. How was your experience encountering them? I know you travelled to various regions to meet them.
Nazira- It was really hard to find them. It’s a form of art that is going extinct. These women were afraid to be recorded on camera because it is now illegal to practise this craft. I was able to find three of them through my mother's acquaintances. One is in Samarqand, my mother's distant relative, and two are in Khujand. The one in Samarqand sang about the mother, and she appeared in Hafta. Their performances were not staged. I set up the equipment, and as we conversed around the dastarkhon, the mourners would start singing on their own terms. Bringing an improvisational element to it. One of them, in Samarqand, has written down her song for me on paper. I cherish this paper dearly.
Another mourner sang about a father, which deeply resonated with my grief. She sang in Tajik, and I felt every word.
At the end, we got so many blessings from all of them for our further journey.
Sabina- Did the filming process feel spiritual to you?
Nazira- Not so much spiritual as logistical. It took about a month and a half. It’s my first experience going so big. Usually, I use green screens and shoot in the homes of my mother and relatives.
I also had to invent a storyline about three women, but also a memory of those I know, my grandmother and grandmother. My mother would always talk about them, but I realised there was not much information available; I had only one picture of my youthful grandmother with her first child surrounded by family. For me, it became more of an abstract story because I had not met women before my mother. I imagined their stories based on historical events according to these women’s timelines.
The filming process deeply resonated with my childhood memories of travelling around Central Asia. We are Qandas, which means “of one blood”. I’m half Kazakh. So this road trip was almost how we spent our holidays when I was a child. We often went on road trips to visit relatives in Kazakhstan.
Karimi’s grandmother on the left
Sabina- How did the subject of extinction resurface in the process? I remember accompanying you in search of a book on the funeral traditions of Tajiks to the Museum of Ethnography in Dushanbe, which led us to the Academy of Sciences to find a single available book on the topic. To me, that was a strong sense of the reality of the extinction of cultural knowledge in printed matter.
Nazira- The work started from the topic of extinction (the theme proposed by Carlos Casas for the Fabrica residency participants). Extinction touched upon all layers of memories, information, archives, and environmental disasters. The fact that the Hafta story is partly fictional is the result of the extinction of memory and history itself.
I’ve chosen to move alongside the Syr Dariya, as our tribe Alim Uly has historically been habituated to it. To me, it was very symbolic to move along the shores and witness the river’s vanishment. As we reached the Aral Sea Syr Darya falls into, or the Aral Qum (Aral Dessert), I saw the very essence of extinction.
I was looking at extinction in all aspects of it and how it grows into the erasure of identity. It has been 100 years of Russian oppression, but in that seemingly short timeline, it’s been possible to erase the memory, knowledge, and environment of our people.
Talking of the book, I am researching grief and death further and, through that, directing myself to research the civil war in Tajikistan. But I’m always taken back to the actual experience of someone's death. And maybe you would agree that there is something in Dushanbe's air — a major traumatic experience that has not been processed and is unspoken. I have a strong impulse (while you know our parents can still share with us the stories of war, as we were so little when this happened) to document these stories, to study the timeline of the war and the events, in order to process them and finally find peace with this overwhelming sorrow.
The subject of death, pain, and grief in current times is everywhere, and I’m constantly taken back to my contemplations.
Sabina- How did the selection of seven screens and the sequence come about?
Nazira- At one moment, I decided that the film would be a seven-channel installation. Initially, it was supposed to be a long film consisting of seven parts (which it still is); during the College Biennale residency, when I was preparing for the final presentation of the film, I decided that each story deserves its own screen and that the stories should all be played at the same time. I chose the linear form of the story, and the sequence goes from the right to the left in the form of the storytelling coming from Persian verse.
working process 3
Sabina- The stories of seven women are on display at the same time, and it feels like there is no hierarchy of one over the other. Also, the time-space continuum doesn’t work the way we think it does, and our memories are all meshed and echoing. And what happens in the present affects how you think of the past.
Nazira- It happened unintentionally, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. The sounds also blend, and you can follow different parts of the stories in the subtitles. I thought about it during the instalment; the idea of overlapping histories is emphasised, and I also wanted to bring forward the poetic storytelling.
The text was written in collaboration with Dilda Ramazan and Anisa Sabiri, which contributed to both the Kazakh and Tajik sides of the narratives.
Sabina- Do you see how you are developing your formula? Do you consider yourself a filmmaker or intuitive moving image artist?
Nazira- Lately, I've been thinking about how my background in stenography and painting is playing a role, meaning I'm starting with the image and visual narrative. It’s like a puzzle. In my head, this puzzle makes total sense; it’s justified.
When at the location, I look around and set up my camera almost like I would my canvas. And I am very process-driven. I like to construct compositions as I learned them in painting and further during the montage.
interviewer - Sabina Khorramdel
introduction - Didla Ramazan
editor - Dana Iskakova
photography - Daniyar Jussupov