Unity/ Adobe Suite
My hometown continues to gain international attention for complex political reasons, leaving its ethnic culture and folk art to be less in the spotlight. The Uyghurs, a key ethnic group in the heritage of Xinjiang’ has a long history and exquisite traditional folk crafts. Located on the ancient Silk Road, the Uyghurs received influence from India, the Middle East and several other central Asian cultures during their long historical evolution. Through this, they were able to produce their own unique artistic style in the field of traditional handicraft decorative pattern art.
As a Xinjiang native, I saw its multi-ethnic fusion that different to any Western art or even the dominant Chinese culture. My study experience here encouraged me to return to my hometown to seek to develop and utilize the traditional artistic resources of my native people and absorb their design elements. Expanding and innovating based on the original Xinjiang Uyghur ornamentation characteristics is a powerful way to inherit and develop minority art.
For Uighurs, this kind of art with geometric decorations not only a source of design inspiration and aesthetic pleasure, but also a profound understanding of Islamic culture and history. Uygur people like to use geometric decorative patterns in architectural decoration. For example, in the design of the Uygur flower cap, the simple distant point, crescent, semicircle, curve, triangle and soon are adopted; In metal utensils, round, triangle, curve, polygon, circle pattern, hexagon, etc. The composition of patterns is symmetrical, continuous, suitable, interspersed, staggered, circular and so on.
At present, there are many designers incorporating ethnic elements into new design fields. There are however, few attempts to explore Uyghur ornamentation as a modern digital design element, both theoretically and practically.
I chose to combine tradition with modern visuals using AR, where the image comes to life when you scan it with your phone, causing different colours and animations to appear. I imagine my work as a bridge to link traditional culture and modern technology.
