Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Solid Knot

Solid Knot includes the works Solid Knot and Salt and Silence that form a two-part exploration of women’s experiences of solitude across generations and cultural settings in Uzbekistan.

The project begins with a documentary video work, Solid Knot, composed of intimate interviews with women from Namangan and Tashkent. A knot ties things together – but also holds tension. Solitude in a woman’s life can be a solid knot: strong, necessary, intimate, and quiet.

Through open-ended questions – about what solitude means to them, how they occupy time when alone, and where solitude lives or hides in their lives – the film paints a quiet portrait of the emotional and sensory landscapes of being alone. These conversations reveal how solitude is shaped by personal history, tightly woven like a knot that holds meaning without always needing to be untied. Rather than seeking conclusions, the film offers a quiet presence.

In parallel, Salt and Silence is conceived as an immersive installation centered around the kitchen – a symbolic space of care, routine, labor and nourishment, but also solitude. Embedded audio fragments from the interviews will create a bridge between the installation and the film, turning the kitchen into a shared sensory archive of solitude.

Smells, textures, and sounds will become tools for empathy and memory. Visitors will be able to sit, touch objects, and feel the emotional weight of domestic silence. Through sound, scent, and touch, the installation invites the viewer into a shared yet intimate solitude, grounded in the domestic and the everyday.

Together, these works create a quiet dialogue between image and object, memory and matter. They ask: What does it mean to be alone, not in isolation, but in one's own company? What does silence carry? And how do women – across time, space, and circumstance – shape that silence into something solid, something sacred?