Presentation: Yuliya Sorokina: DAVRA and Beyond: Videos of Central Asian Artists

Saturday, March 16, 3pm

Please join us for a presentation by Yuliya Sorokina, a curator and professor from Kazakhstan. This program is part of the exhibition, Saodat Ismailova: Other Time and DAVRA research collective on view at JOAN through March 30. On the occasion of this exhibition, DAVRA invited Sorokina to curate a selection of films by young Central Asian artists working with moving image, which will be screened from March 21-30 within the installation space. During this talk Sorokina will speak about the film program and focus on the theme of community building in Central Asia through the example of DAVRA.

Zamanbap Art Collective, Winter Theatre (still), 2024. HD film, color, sound, 11 min. 35 sec.

DAVRA and Beyond: Videos of Central Asian Artists program:
Umida Akhmedova & Oleg Karpov, I want to live, 2010
Surayyo Tuychieva, Generation Next, 2014
Nazira Karimi, Hard to Digest, 2020
Aïda Adilbek, Köbelek, 2023
Zamanbap Art Collective, Winter Theatre, 2024
Saule Dyussenbina, Kazakh Funny Games, 2017-2020
Madina Joldybek, White Noise, 2021
Nazilya Nagimova, Chulpan – the Mother, 2022
Sonata Raiymkulova, Four Stories, 2018
Zhanar Bereketova, Hoope, 2023

Yuliya Sorokina, PhD, is a writer, curator, and professor based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her research centers on the art history of post-Soviet countries. She is also assistant professor at the Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty, and the Chairperson of the Board of Asia Art+ Public Foundation. Sorokina is currently a scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Sorokina’s major exhibitions and projects include: Digital Resource and Moving Virtual Museum of Central Asian Contemporary Art, astralnomads.net, 2013-ongoing; The School of Artistic Gesture for young artists, 2016-21; Eurasian Utopia: Post Scriptum, 2018-19; Muzykstan, 2nd Central Asian Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennial, 2007. She has published numerous texts in local and international catalogs, books, journals, and social media.

DAVRA is a research collective dedicated to studying, documenting, and disseminating Central Asian culture and knowledge. Saodat Ismailova established DAVRA in 2021 and has collaborated extensively with artists from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. For the artist, DAVRA is an effort to reunite a region composed of various countries, histories, and languages, and to create synergy from the ancestral knowledges in Central Asia.

Photos by Evan Walsh.