The Artisans

Canadian writer Madeleine Thien reflects on a ­fragment of a mural depicting three Uyghur Princes from one of the Bezeklik Caves along the Northern Silk Road, in what is now the Xinjiang Uyghur ­Autonomous Region of China. This most renowned donor portrait of Uyghur-Buddhist art was brought to the Berlin museums following the Second German Turfan Expedition (1904–1905). Thien responds to its vibrant colors and expressive lines with a fictional text, transporting us into the daily lives of the painters who adorned the caves with strikingly lifelike murals in the tenth century. She asks: Is there an autonomous republic of art that transcends time and place?