Uyghur Week: The paintings of Abdukadir Dilmurat

Ipad rendering of a painting by Abdukadir Dilmurat

This New York Times article in the Sunday paper inspired me to choose a Uyghur (wee-ger) artist from the Xinjiang province of China. I've never heard of Abdukadir Dilmurat until now, but I am quite impressed with his paintings, especially after trying to copy one of them on the ipad, as you see above. It wasn't easy! He used every color imaginable and placed those colors in very particular places. He obviously enjoys the act of painting and the feel of the paint.

Learn a bit about the Uyghur people and I think it's pretty easy to find the symbolism of the colors. Being of Turkish decent, the Uyghurs are pretty different than the Han Chinese living in the rest of China. They look different, the culture is different, they speak a different language. They even use their own time, Xinjiang time, separate from the rest of China. These differences create a lot of political unrest in the region of which one can find resonating in the abstract paintings of Abdukadir Dilmurat.