This project looks at the Uyghur diaspora and its cultural and artistic production that draws the world’s attention and bears witness to the various abuses perpetrated at home by the Chinese government. It also aims to understand new expressions of nostalgia in Uyghur cultural production and the relationships between individual trauma and collective struggle, as well as the emerging role of Uyghur art in community building.
Based on participant observation, interviews and in-depth analysis of texts produced by Uyghur artists (broadly including written and oral texts but also various artwork in different formats and styles), this project seeks to tackle new transmedia forms of testimonies in the Uyghur case.
This research project is funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) – project F.4519-21/ TEM-OUIGEXIL (2021-2023)
The Uyghurs
Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking people based at the border of Central Asia and the north-western part of China. Massive internments and arrests by Chinese authorities of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have taken place in the region since 2016, including Uyghur artists, cultural producers and creative entrepreneurs.
In these conditions, centers of cultural production of the Uyghurs have shifted from their native land to the diaspora spread across the world, while intellectual and artistic creation in the Uyghur diaspora now largely arise from a new sense of exile.
