In 2013, she left to study photography and fashion imagery at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In Brooklyn, where everyone wears their roots with swagger, she began to see the city of her childhood in a new light. “I want to show the cool side of Xinjiang, a side I’m calling Uruklyn,” she said. The portmanteau, a contraction of Ürümqi and Brooklyn, gave rise to a project launched in 2021: residents of Ürümqi and Kashgar, an oasis city in the region’s southwest, strike poses on their rooftops and street corners, just as New York hipsters might. Kashgar is also the birthplace of the series “Kashi Youth,” in which a 2025 image shows a helmeted young woman in leopard print, pink tulle ruffles, and white sneakers, standing before a motorcycle draped in red lace like a fashion accessory.
