Living Shrines | Lisa Ross
Living Shrines is a series of ethereal photographs that take us on a journey through the Xinjiang region of China, where Lisa Ross has spent over a decade documenting Islamic holy shrines created by the Uyghur community. These shrines take on an otherworldly presence, having been adorned with the devotional offerings of those who pass through on pilgrimage, maintained over the course of centuries.
The exhibition featured work by Ross over thecourse of a ten-year period, photographed throughout the Taklamakan Desert ofChina’s far northwest. Ross’s workdocuments desert shrines built by the Uyghur people to honor Sufi saints. Know as mazars,these shrines are not only devotional but also encompass personal prayersoffered by those who pass through on pilgrimage. These holy sites are home tovarious offerings including the remains of sacrificial animals, or dolls leftby women praying for children.
About the artist
Lisa Ross is a photographer, video artist and educator living in New York City.
Ross’s work revolves around the liminal spaces in which faith, culture and abstraction meet. Her immersive landscapes and early black and white work, explore the skin of the land. In doing so, she reveals the texture of culture, and, in time, the political realities inextricably bound to place that emerge.
Her work has been shown at the University of California at Berkeley; Rencontres D’Arles Foto Festival, France; the Rubin Museum of Art, New York; Fotografiska Museum, Stockholm, Sweden; University of London, SOAS, Brunei Gallery; and La Vielle Charite, Marseilles, France and Harvard University.
Ross has worked in North Africa, Central Asia, China, Europe and Azerbaijan. She received an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Ross is a fellow of the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace program; a two time recipient of the Hayward Prize through the American Austrian Foundation; made a commissioned work in Azerbaijan for CICRP/French Ministry of Culture for Marseilles 2013. She has taught at Parsons School of Design, Columbia University and The Harvey Milk School.
Ross’s work received reviews in The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Artforum, The Wall Street Journal and many other print and online journals. Her book has received enthusiastic responses in The New York Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books and London Review of Books.
See more work by Lisa Ross on her website.