'Cactus Flower of Xinjiang' with footstool

Sizes:
166 x 95 x 80cm
84 x 56 x 38cm
Medium: hand molded silicon with FG base
Edition: 20 + 4 AP

The wild, stony steppes and towering Heavenly Mountains of Turkestan form the backdrop. A shifting, shimmering veil of pearlescent dust and tinkling sand, swept by capricious winds off the alkali plateau into scurrying, scouring eddies, wafts across the middle ground, obscuring the view and focusing the gaze on the foreground, where a fuschia bubble-gum growth erupts from amid the nestling dun stones and jostling grey gravel. A maiden perches with elfin grace on this roseate outcrop. You rub your eyes. This must be a mirage, for the scene is more akin to that of a mermaid curled up on a concave coral slab in aquamarine tropical seas; yet this is the midst of Xinjiang's Taklamakhan Desert, whose name in the Turkic tongue of its indigenous Uygur folk - the Lords of the Silk Gate - means 'go in and don't come out again.' And you are utterly lost in this vast, sterile waste. No mermaid then; a siren of the desert? A succubus? A gh_l from Arabian folklore, that female demon that lurks in wait to seduce forewandered male wayfarers with her irresistible, unearthly charms and diabolical attractions?

Oh! That the Desert were my dwelling place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might forget all the human race,
And hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements! - in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted - can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

The stanza comes unbidden to mind. Heedful of Lord Byron's dictum, you don't speak to her, but edge closer, thirsting, thirsting to know. Not one growth but two: cacti. The cactus this desert sprite sits on looks like a hand, the hand of a venerated saint come back to the world to dispense comfort and balm in this sere, forsaken emptiness. You dimly recall that the Chinese word for cactus is xi_nrénzh_ng (œ…»À'∆ 'saint's hand'). Is this why? The nymph - well, she can't be that for there's no water in this place - looks at you with an inscrutable, ethereal gaze, lips curled in an enigmatic smile like the Mona Lisa, but with the light of a secret lore gleaming in her eyes. Is she a cactus flower? A Kazakh sheperdess? An Uzbek princess? She looks Chinese, though. Perhaps she is the spectre of Wang Zhaojun, an imperial concubine coerced into a dynastic marriage with a Tartar chieftain in this part of the world during the Han Dynasty:

Towards Jingmen the crowding hills' ravines race,
To reveal the vivacious odalisque's birth place.
At New Moon, she left from the Purple Palace,
Her lone green mausoleum faces yellow twilight.
The king had but portraits recalling spring wind's face,
At night, her wayward shade returns under moonlight.
So many years, her lute played in the Tartar tongue,
To express deep sorrow in the songs she had sung.
Composed in Remembrance of Things Past III, Du Fu

Her seat is salmon, a translucent jellyfish transfixed by dawn's first rays. The sea again? No, it's definitely a succulent, for the only waves here are the hot, dry scirocco-esque winds that cascade down from the far, unseen slopes of the mighty Tian Shan to buffet you with their blasts and cause the stones to clack and clatter like Moorish castanets. A spiny succulent, as you perceive by and by, for it bears stickers: a true cactus. Or is it? The desert maid sits on it without discomfort, nay at her ease, a gaudy clownfish cocooned by the tentacles of its protective sea anemone host to whose venom it is immune. But this is no coral reef. Ever closer, you see that the second growth looks like an ottoman, wrought from finest Cordoban leather, leached by the incessant steppe wind and bleached by the remorseless sun of this great treeless plateau to this pale powder-red tint. Perhaps a conquering Mongol khan bore it here as booty across the Silk Road after sacking Tashkent and then discarded it. But why leave such precious plunder behind? Just as the first growth looks like a hand, this one looks like the upturned paw of a new-born snow leopard cub, but its claws are thorns. With a groan, you settle down onto it, for this succulent pink oasis is the only feature in this immense terrain that entices you. All else is dun dust and frowning, fractured stone. The upthrusting spikes give way beneath you and you feel as if you are billowing gently upwards on sportive wavelets. The maiden or elf or whatever she is looks directly at you. Her smile widens, and then you understand.


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