Bearing Witness to China s Orwellian Dystopia – by Suzy Weiss – Common Sense with Bari Weiss
You describe your work as a visual narrative of the region and as a testimony to its abrupt descent into an Orwellian dystopia. I d like to know more about that descent. What were some of the most important changes you saw between your first trips to Xinjiang in 2016, and your most recent trip in 2019?
There were two major differences. The first was the increase of the police on the ground. In 2016, it was a highly-surveilled region. By 2019, it had become an open air prison filled with police. The officers are all Uyghur people, and they are checking you all the time. You have to go through a body scan and security, just like when you go through an airport, but whenever you enter any public place at all, like a bazaar or a supermarket.