The Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic group who predominantly live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang in China. They are ethnically and culturally closer to the people of Central Asia than they are to the Han Chinese. For decades, various Chinese leaders in Beijing have worked to dilute the Uyghur population in the province by encouraging Han Chinese to move to the area and ‘Develop the West’. One of the largest statues of Mao Zedong was constructed by the Communist Government near the People’s Square in Kashgar (the Uyghur cultural capital where these images are made); the locals joke that the 18m figure points towards the ‘new’ town with his back toward the ‘old’ town.

These diptychs are glimpses from both the ‘old’ town, and the rapidly expanding ‘new’ town in Kashgar, located in the desert on the western edge of China.