Tursunay Ziawudun

On the 200 m2 wall of the telecoms operator Orange in Marseille, a look now dominates the city, signed by the Marseille street artist Mahn Kloix: that of Tursunay Ziawudun, a Uyghur who testified on her ordeal in the “camps” Chinese.

On October 8 with a simple stencil, “Tursunay Ziawudun, by Mahn Kloix”.

No message beyond this name and face, which the artist painted from an image from a BBC documentary where this 43-year-old woman recounts the rapes she suffered in one of the “camps” set up by the Chinese regime in the western region of Xinjiang, first in 2017, then in 2018.

Under an almost transparent lace veil, the look is soft. With his hand on the cheek, Tursunay Ziawudun seems “looking to the future”: “One of my challenges”, Mahn Kloix explains to AFP, “it is to talk about negative things without falling into the negative, to always give an image of hope”. This woman’s journey has been “violent”, explains the 40-year-old artist, who spent two years in Beijing, when he was still a graphic designer and above all a long-haul traveler. It was through this BBC documentary that he discovered Tursunay Ziawudun’s ordeal. “It took me to the guts.”

With this work, Mahn Kloix signs the first stage of MauMa, the Museum of Urban Art in Marseille, initiated by the Méta2 association. Objective within three years: to cover the walls of the neighborhoods behind the port with a hundred works.