CHAT with Artist: Umida Akhmedov

Umida Akhmedova, a photographer and a filmmaker, was born in 1955 in Tashkent. Since 1980, she has worked as an assistant camera-person in a scientific and documentary films studio in Uzbekistan. In 1986, Akhmedova graduated from the Soviet State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. After graduation, she started her career as a camerawoman and a filmmaker, and produced dozens of documentary films. Simultaneously, she never parts with her photo camera and often participates in organising different photo exhibitions.

Since 2001, many of Akhmedova’s works have been published in books and photo albums produced in Uzbekistan. In 2007, her first photobook Women and Men from Sunrise to Sunset  was released. Her solo exhibitions were held in Tashkent, Tbilisi in Georgia, Copenhagen in Denmark, Bilbao in Spain, and in various cities across Russia. She participated in Re:visited  at the Riga Art Space (2014), the 5th Moscow Biennale (2013), Tashkent Biennale (2007), and others.  

In 2004, Akhmedova was awarded a Grand Prix in Press Photo Russia under the category ‘Modern Photography of Central Asia’. In 1985, she was awarded a silver medal in the All-Union photo exhibition at VDNKh (Exhibition of the Achievements of National Economy) in Moscow.

Based in Almaty, Kazakhstan and elsewhere, Alexandra Tsay is an independent curator and researcher interested in the conjunction between contemporary art and critical theory. Her research interests focus on the politics and aesthetics of contemporary art in transitional societies of Central Asia. Tsay has curated exhibitions and programmed festivals in Almaty.

Tsay is also a co-editor of the collective volume Stalinism in Kazakhstan: History, Memory, and Representation  (Lexington Books, 2021). During her Spring 2017 fellowship at George Washington University, Tsay explored contemporary art as a cultural public sphere and space for alternative narratives in Kazakhstan, and her paper ‘Contemporary Art as a Public Forum in Kazakhstan’ was published in The Nazarbayev Generation: Youth in Kazakhstan  (Lexington Books, 2019).

During her residency at CHAT and in Hong Kong in 2021, Tsay researched both traditional and contemporary ornaments and representational fabrics from Central Asia and Hong Kong to explore the connections and similarities between distant geographic locales of Asia, and reflect on life forces that guide and shape the complex structures and social fabrics in both areas.