The Tarim Network is leaping into 2025 with renewed energy! Watch this space for some exciting new projects that will give you the opportunity to engage with your peers and community to enact lasting change ✨
Like the poplar trees in the Tarim basin that we are named after, we’ve dug our roots in deep and are ready to last through the ages. Through snow powdered deserts to dry oases - we’re here to provide you with the shade, balms, and tools to elevate our community together!
Launched in 2019, we’ve steadily grown to create a network of inspirational and aspirational Uyghur and Turkic youth.
From introducing our people to each other on social media and podcasts, to creating programs to learn Uyghur language and history, to hosting concerts and seminars, publishing your art and literature, helping youth get internships, or starting a book club - we’ve endeavoured to meet the needs of our diaspora as we saw it, and as you let us know.
And we want to reiterate that promise to ourselves and to you.
2025 is going to be our craziest year yet 😎. So get ready to be involved, whether you want to volunteer, support us, be featured, or join our programs. We have some awesome people working on ongoing ones and have some very exciting new projects happening as well 👀
So to everyone here who identifies with us, welcome to the network! Let’s get ittttt 👑🤝👑
We’ll be posting soon about our goals and some upcoming events so stay tuned!
From the press release of Under Light of Moon and Sun, an exhibition held by 99Canal @99canal.nyc in NYC: “Under Light of Moon and Sun features 18 artists from the Uyghur diaspora, Hong Kong, and mainland China, and unfolds through an assemblage of moving image works, textile sculptures, installations, and works on paper including drawings, zines, and woodcut prints.”
The Uyghur artists include the works of:
Darya Andijan @daryaaaandijan : In Do You Know That I’m With You?, Darya evokes Gülem, a forgotten carpet-weaving goddess from the Khotan kingdom of the Uyghur region, and imagines traveling with her across Central Asia to piece together her lost memories and extend her existence beyond their homeland. The film interlaces the verses of imprisoned poet Gulnisa Imin—read by Uyghur women in diaspora—with multi-voiced narration and archival footage. Its layered structure forms a poetic, narrative-driven journey that foregrounds resilience amid displacement, confronting the colonial erasure of Uyghur identity and insisting on the persistence of voices that continue to speak across borders.
Mukaddas Mijit @mukaddas_mt : Geopoetics is a collaborative audiovisual work led by Mukaddas Mijit that brings together six Uyghur diaspora artists to explore displacement and the evolving relationship to place. Through an open score of loose instructions, the artists contributed soundscapes and visual fragments drawn from their current environments, creating a mosaic shaped by distance, memory, and shared cultural ties. The work examines how identity and belonging are renegotiated when geography can no longer serve as a unifying anchor, evolving into a living archive of diaspora experience that captures the fluid, interwoven ways Uyghur artists remake communities across borders.
Join Rawan at the upcoming Uyghur American Cup’s football tournament in Houston, Texas for a youth activity day after the games are over! Hosted at Jones College at Rice University, join us for college info sessions, essay editing office hours (for upcoming application deadlines), campus tours, games, food, and a Kahoot competition (with prizes)! Parents, kids — all are welcome! See you there!
***EDIT: Address change!!!***
Peabody Museum
11 Divinity Ave
Level 5, Rm 52H
Cambridge MA 02138
Join us on Saturday December 13th at Harvard for the launch of Encounters Under the Mulberry Tree Vol II.
The event will feature a panel with all co-editors and readings from contributors.
Doors open at 2:30 pm and the program begins at 3:00 pm.
RSVP: bit.ly/harvardbooklaunch
Munawwar Abdulla is an Uyghur advocate, poet, and scientist born on unceded Kaurna land (Adelaide, Australia) and based in Massachusetts. She co-founded The Tarim Network, runs Uyghur Collective, and collaborates on projects with Uyghur rights organisations around the world. Her writings and literary translations have been published in places such as Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, The Margins, and others.
Maidina Kadeer is a mixed Uyghur-Hui writer and editor, born in Ghulja and currently based in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke), Canada. She holds a BA in English Literature and Law and Society from Concordia University, with a focus on post- and neo-colonial literature. Her work explores Uyghur identity, history, and culture through cuisine, agriculture, and neo-colonialism. She has published works in projects like the Slavs and Tatars’ Contest of the Fruits (2021) and participates in panels and interviews on Agriculture and Food History to raise awareness about Uyghur culture.
Sonya Imin is a mixed Uyghur American scholar and multi-disciplinary creative who has worked on art and film projects across the US, Europe, and Central Asia. Growing up between the borderlands of the Uyghur homeland, broader Central Asia, and the midwestern United States, interrogations of belonging, home, and displacement influence the nature of her work. Currently based in Brussels, she is working on her doctoral research on Uyghur artistic production in the diaspora.
Encounters Under The Mulberry Tree (Vol II)
NOW AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE
LINK IN BIO TO PURCHASE
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Under the Mulberry Tree is back with its second volume.
A collection of emerging and established Uyghurs writers, this multilingual volume is an exploration of encounters near and far.
Worldwide shipping available.
Psssst… Keep an eye out on our page for all upcoming events!
Meet Nazugum Sami (@nazukasami_ ), a talented Uyghur artist based in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and a proud member of the DUNYA Art Organization (@duniya_art_gallery ), which brings together artists from across Central Asia.
From an early age, Nazugum was surrounded by creativity. She studied at art schools in Yarkent, Kazakhstan, where she developed a deep appreciation for Uyghur artistic traditions. Her passion for design and culture led her to the Design Faculty at Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, where she refined her artistic skills and vision.
Today, Nazugum dedicates her work to celebrating Uyghur national identity, culture, and traditional values. Her paintings reflect the spirit of her people and the natural beauty of her homeland. She especially loves painting etudes in the mountains, where she finds her greatest inspiration.
Nazugum has held several solo exhibitions and participated in group shows with artists from across Central Asia. Most recently, on October 3, her works were featured in the International Exhibition of Central Asian Artists, titled “In Search of Roots” at Almaty Gallery (@almaty.gallery ), presented by DUNYA Art Organization - congrats!
Through her art, Nazugum Sami hopes to continue sharing the voice and vision of the Uyghur people — a reminder of the deep cultural roots that continue to inspire and connect us all.
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Encounters: Under The Mulberry Tree, Vol. II.
Encounters grows from the roots of our first volume, reaching toward the spaces where memory, place, and identity intertwine. It’s where our stories meet and diverge, where languages echo across distance, and where belonging continues to evolve in unexpected ways.
Join us as we come together to celebrate these voices, journeys, and encounters that shape our latest volume.
November 8, 2025 | Link in bio
