New Sculpture: Kashgar Column by Patrick D Wilson

Kashgar Column, 2013
wood and laminated C-prints
32″ x 18″ x 33″

This sculpture is being included in the Surge Art Fair in Chengdu, China. It will be on display through October 5th in the Eastern Suburb Music Park. It is made from new and reclaimed wood and laminated C-Prints. The form is a column capital from a home being renovated in Kashgar, and the images are the removed doors from Kashgar’s Old City. I photographed the old city back in June when I visited Xinjiang. The related blog post and source images are here.

Advertisement

Near a School in Kashgar

There was a little row of shops just outside the schoolyard selling all manner of sugar themed objects. The kids would make a break for the gate and the security guards would redirect them to whatever activity was happening in the yard. I did see a liaison at the fence of a shopkeeper sneaking a candy bar to the kids in candy quarantine. I am sure it is quite an industry.

Hardware Wagon

These guys were situated just opposite the Idkah Mosque.

Old Fellows at the Bazaar

Kids Near the Old City

These two were quite a team. The girl in red had a hard time staying upright and out of the mud puddles. I was genuinely concerned that her mother was going to come out and think that the foreigners had somehow been party to all the havoc she created with her clothes in five minutes. Before we left them, she made a point of smelling each of our hands and then very dramatically putting on a disgusted air, and then cheerily said goodbye. It was hilarious.

Lamb Cart

I’ll take a break from construction sites to show some images of the people in Kashgar. One thing that seemed different about taking pictures there was that people were not only willing to have their picture taken but seemed to want to stand for pictures. I was sort of snooping around photographing the cart when the seated gentleman suggested I take their picture. They sat very naturally, neither disturbed nor very interested in what I was doing there, and I’ll admit, he’s pretty photogenic.

Of course there is an incredible amount of lamb sold and eaten in Kashgar and it’s more difficult to get away from than find. I didn’t see a lot of carts of this kind, but there were a few.

Apartment Renovation at Night

We stumbled into this site one evening. A group of very young workers were spraying polyurethane over the interior woodwork on what was to be somebody’s apartment. The light from work lamps, still-wet surfaces and solvent mist in the air made for a very interest shooting environment. Again we were welcomed in even though they were still working as though this was a very natural thing to do.

Brickwork and Structure

One technique I don’t think I have seen before is the way the local carpenters were first stacking the brick interstice and then using that to support forms to pour the reinforced concrete structure between the rough ends of the brick. It seems backwards to me but seems to require a lot less hardware in the way of oiled forms and support structures.

Finishers

Two women busy at finishing the woodwork, filling cracks and sanding the molding. They invited us in after we were standing outside for several minutes staring through the exterior window openings at the amazing amount of decoration on the still raw wood.

Old City Renovation-Pillar

The workers were good enough to let me walk around the apartment and photograph the work in progress. There was an amazing amount of detail in the woodwork for a residency. The crack going through several layers of ornamentation seems to indicate that it is carved as a single piece rather than fabricated from parts.