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| sketches by Yiren, 11" x 16", pen and watercolor |
New York photographer Lisa Ross traveled to Xinjiang many
times. Her photographs of “The Living Shrines of Uyghur China”, showing
wind-battered marks in Xinjiang, China, are astonishingly beautiful. (www.studiolisaross.com) The markmakers, using
branches, flags, and pieces of cloth to make visual importance in a desert is
very different than the Christian cemetery or Islamic burial site which are marked
by tombstones, cubic–like structures and space alignment. For both the East and West sacred grounds,
the influence of nature and culture can
be seen in the construction and age of the sites. The spiritual ideology that lies within a mound , a shine, or a grave becomes tangible. Uyghur’s spiritual marks sometimes
look like a bunch of scraps gathered up together to push back against the strong wind and sand of the open plains. To put this into perspective, an ancient Native American burial ground is often surrounded
by land developers. Nature and cultural forces can shapes our perception of how we should die, how to be remembered,
and for the most part, how to treat holiness in a very private and religious
way.
I stopped by the Perryman Cemetery, a property of Tulsa
Historical Society in my neighborhood, took some pictures and left there with a
bit of a cultural understanding of an open land that became a town.
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| Tulsa Perryman Cemetery |
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