ANIWAR, MAMAT

b. 1962, Kashgar

Painter

Mamat Aniwar is an independent Uighur painter living in Beijing, best known for his large and mainly abstract oil paintings that incorporate motifs of Uighur culture (see Uighurs (Weiwu’er), culture of). He has also painted a large number of paintings with ink and watercolour on Korean paper and worked with more figurative and universal motifs related mainly to sexuality and life, such as sperms, sex organs and female bodies. Aniwar is hailed as one of China’s most innovative and bold artists and his work has been presented in numerous exhibitions in China and abroad.

Since the late 1990s, he has been affiliated with the famous Courtyard Gallery in Beijing (see art galleries (private, commercial))

After a short period of study in 1980 at the Tianjin Institute of Art and Design, he worked between 1981 and 1984 as a carpet designer in the Xinjiang Woven Carpet Design Centre. Between 1985 and 1987 he studied oil painting at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, and he is currently teaching at the School of Arts and Design in the capital. Aniwar’s oil paintings combine modern Western techniques and styles with patterns, forms, colours and textures that draw upon traditional Central Asian and Islamic architecture, carpets and textiles. Another source of inspiration evident in his work is the landscape, fauna, and flora of the deserts of Xinjiang. In this unique combination Aniwar offers an important alternative to the dominant visual representation of Uighur culture in China, which either sticks to the revolutionary socialist realist style, or tends to paint it with orientalistic, exotic colours.