Tarim Tapestry is a collection of short fiction works inspired by the ancient history and folklore of the Taklamakan Desert in central Asia. It includes The Beauty of Loulan, The Witches of Subeshi, Tocharian Love Song, The Myth of Lop Nor, and Tales of the Silk Road.

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In the remote Tarim basin, near the Peacock River, 4000 years ago, lived a woman who has come to be named The Beauty of Loulan. When she was buried, she wore a middy skirt, fur boots, a woven woolen cloak decorated with long loops, and a felt and wool hood topped with a decorative feather. Beside her was a basket containing grains of wheat – a winnowing tray covered her.

This well-preserved mummy is part of a series of mummies discovered in the far western desert in present-day China (Xinjiang), which date from 2000 BCE to 200 CE.

Their costumes, and especially textiles, may indicate a common origin with Indo-European Neolithic clothing techniques. Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who examined the tartan-style cloth, marked similarities between it and fragments recovered from salt mines associated with the Hallstatt culture. She especially noted the plaids and twills used by the early Tarim peoples.

So, since she can no longer tell her whole story, we must imagine one for her. This piece is inspired by the complex weaving strategies of the ancient people of the Taklamakan Desert – the elaborate long-hop twills, the weft looping, the tablet tapestries. The reader, using a touch screen, can follow the weft through the warp of centuries to recover the fabric of the life of The Beauty of Loulan.

Artist's Statement:

The Tarim Basin is a large basin in northwestern China occupying an area of 350,000 square miles. Located in China’s Takla Makan Desert, Tarim Tapestry also known as Taklamakan, it is in a portion of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Of particular historical interest in this region are the accounts of Marco Polo, the Silk Road. The Urumchi Mummies, the Lop Nor culture, the ancient Tocharian language, and the folklore of the indigenous peoples of the region.

This piece contains experiments with HTML 5 and JavaScript. In “The Beauty of Loulan”, the reader coaxes the text to appear by “weaving” a traditional fabric of the area on a virtual loom.

These works are drawn from the work of Elizabeth Waland Barber, J.P. Mallor and Victor H. Mair The Tarim Mummies, and Marco Polo The Travels.

Music: Altan Urag Folk Rock Band of Mongolia

Tarim Tapestry

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