All posts tagged: Dilmurad Abdukadir

New Uyghur Interior Design and the Art of Dilmurat Abdukadir

On the top floor of the Aq Saray or the White Palace hotel in Ürümchi is a massive reproduction of Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David. He is flanked on his left by a reproduction of Ivan Kramskoi’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman (which everyone associates with Anna Karenina). Across the expansive red room, otherwise decorated in the style of a Russian tea room, gigantic reproductions of Venetian canals and cityscapes fill out the walls. Overhead murals of clouds, star constellations, and pheasants in flight glow against the ornate heavy white archways that surround them. The paintings are the works of Dilmurat Abdukadir– who was hired by the owner of the restaurant to produce life-sized images of paintings the owner had found on the Internet. The space is fascinating. Not only does it unapologetically embrace an amalgam of European aesthetics, but it is symptomatic of larger trends in Uyghur restaurant politics and aesthetics. Somewhere around 2008, scholars began to notice that Turkish imports were on the rise in Xinjiang. Suddenly chocolates from the massive …

On the First Uyghur Contemporary Art Show

The first Uyghur contemporary art exhibition opened at the Xinjiang Contemporary Art Museum on May 16. The opening was attended by several hundred people from across the province, including most of the represented artists. Since the majority of the painters were teachers or professors, many leading administrators from local universities were also present. Aside from them and a few Han painters from local art schools that the museum’s leading curator, Zeng Chunkai, had invited for the opening, nearly everyone was Uyghur. Even a famous Uyghur public intellectual, Yalkun Rozi, came and praised the artists – although he clearly didn’t understand contemporary art. Everyone I spoke with was thrilled by the opening. Several viewers were amazed to see Uyghurs given voice in a professional contemporary art space. Just seeing their work on the wall was a major thing. The artists I spoke with felt as though the exhibition — which will last until June 16 — was a turning point in the Uyghur contemporary art scene. To them it presaged greater recognition and further development outside of Xinjiang and into the world. Actually the exhibition …