The social and cultural conflict in China's Islamic region is a hidden theme. Once as a young artist living in Urumqi, Wang Ling rethought and realized the contemporary Islamic culture in Xinjiang on the other side.

In the series paintings "Gobi Spring", Wang Ling made a systems analysis and in-depth study on the characteristics of Islamic patterns and shapes, which commonly can be seen curved in the wall of Mosques or public buildings. In his view, the pictures transmitted Islamic culture's self-enclosed, exclusive, aggressive temperament, in history, when this kind of complexity met out-strangers, it often exhibited with violent conflict and discomfort.

The "Night-Walking" is an art performance under the background of Urumqi 7•5 Event. As a young Han, Wang Ling had ever personally experienced that riots, his spiritual world suffered severe contusion. In the deep winter 2010, he returned to the city, holding a burning candle, walking in those scarred streets. He, in the Quran words and historical shadows, was trying to find a spiritual exit transcending the racial barriers.

Wang Ling's many works, implies a silent and powerful forces of darkness. He often let the fire become the protagonist of historical narrative, interwoven and reborn with the darkness. Syrian poet Adonis wrote that "fire has its own writing, but eventually reduced to ashes." as if, all the incomplete combustion of things became a certain solo proof, after those matters went in silence.

Courtesy of Soemo Fine Arts