Ini­tial­ly, Gul­noza thought she knew her­self well enough and was open enough to start a film project about the rela­tion­ship between her and Denis, her boyfriend. She didn’t want to be afraid of talk­ing about the future, about reli­gion and faith, wanted to be honest and straight­for­ward, show­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The film­ing was sup­posed to take over ten days but took a dif­fer­ent direction.

Gul­noza Irga­she­va is a film­mak­er and activist based in Naman­gan, Uzbek­istan. Gul­noza­’s artis­tic and activist prac­tices focus on decolo­nial­i­ty, Muslim wom­en’s agency, and resis­tance strat­e­gy to oppres­sion dynam­ics and colo­nial con­structs based on gender, eth­nic­i­ty, reli­gion, race, and sexual ori­en­ta­tion. Uti­liz­ing a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry approach, their artistry involves decen­tral­ized deci­sion-making, engag­ing the entire cast in every stage of filmmaking.

They com­menced their film­mak­ing jour­ney with the short film GURUNG during an archival footage film­mak­ing pro­gramme. Engag­ing in Ate­liers Varan’s doc­u­men­tary pro­gramme, Gul­noza craft­ed the exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary DEVORDAGI BOLALIK SURATIM that is set for fes­ti­val dis­tri­b­u­tion soon.

Gul­noza Irga­she­va con­cep­tu­al­ized and guided a series of site-spe­cif­ic per­for­mances, bring­ing togeth­er thir­teen young women from Uzbek­istan to explore themes of domes­tic­i­ty and every­day rit­u­als at Venice Bien­nale 2024