The Artisans

Is there an autonomous republic of art that transcends time and place?

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 colors 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.