Madeleine Thien: The Artisans
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| 8 € |
| Available in the Humboldt Forum shop and online |
| English |
| Part of: Objects talk back |
Canadian writer Madeleine Thien reflects on a fragment of a mural depicting Three Uighur Princes from one of the Bezeklik Caves along the Northern Silk Road, in what is now the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China. This most renowned donor portrait of Uighur-Buddhist art was brought to the Berlin museums following the Second German Turfan Expedition (1904–5). Thien responds to its vibrant colours and expressive lines with a literary text, transporting us into the daily lives of the painters who adorned the caves with strikingly lifelike murals in the tenth century. She asks: Is there an autonomous republic of art that transcends time and place?
Published by Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss
Diaphanes, Paperback, 11 x 17 cm, 48 pages, ISBN 978-3-0358-0794-3
This particularly well-preserved and thus most renowned donor portrait of Uyghur-Buddhist art was brought to Berlin with the collection of the second Turfan expedition (October 1904 – December 1905). German explorers and archaeologists had travelled to Xinjiang, where they collected Buddhist artworks and manuscripts and took them to Germany. The finds provided significant insights into the cultural history of the region, but today they are critically reassessed within the debate on colonial appropriation.
The painting depicts three men wearing Uyghur hats and with carefully plaited, long black hair. Their side-slit robes reveal black riding boots. This type of clothing indicates that nomadic traditions continued despite a sedentary lifestyle.
Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her diverse body of work includes novels, short stories, a children’s book, and numerous essays. At the heart of her writing is the question of how personal and collective history can be retold in the context of migration, trauma, and the search for identity and belonging.
Her work has been translated into more than 25 languages and has won Canada’s most prestigious literary awards, along with numerous other honours. Madeleine Thien lives in Montreal, Canada.