Artist feeds burning desire to create

Using great patience and focus to control the heated tool in his hand, Keram Razak, a pokerwork artist from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, drew the beauty of his hometown on paper in the burning art form that never fades.

"I want to use this skill to help people appreciate the beauty of life and show Xinjiang's cultural legacy to the world," said the 49-year-old inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of pyrography in Turpan, a city in the region.

Pyrography is the art of burning images into wood or other materials with heated tools, such as a poker or soldering iron. It has been practiced since ancient times.

In 2019, as efforts to protect the area's intangible cultural heritage intensified, Keram was invited to open a studio in Grape Valley, a tourist attraction in Turpan, a city that is famous for its sweet grapes.

In addition to common woodblocks and gourds, whose surfaces are decorated using the handicraft, his studio features a number of pyrographic works made on mulberry paper and mounted in frames.

Keram works on local mulberry paper, which is crafted from the tree of the same name and is famous for its durability.

The handmade paper is a time-honored handicraft of the Uygur ethnic group in Xinjiang and also an intangible cultural heritage.

In May, he attended a six-day mulberry-paper workshop to learn about its manufacturing process.

He has been drawing on the paper for more than two years. "It was no easy task to turn my inspiration into reality," he said.

He added that the creative process requires strict temperature control as the paper is thinner than many other suitable materials and can easily burn through.

Keram managed to represent ancient murals from the ruins of a local Buddhist grotto. "I want to combine local mulberry paper with local murals in Xinjiang," he said.

After visiting the grotto several times to examine the characteristics of the murals and reading about their history, he completed a series of portraits of Buddhists on the light-brown paper using delicate pyrographic lines.

Having shown a strong interest in art as a child, he is now an art teacher in Turpan.

During a 2007 teaching training program in the northern port city of Tianjin, he came across a piece of pokerwork art in a market and was immediately intrigued by the special drawing tool and the realistic patterns on the pictures.

That prompted him to learn the techniques. "There were lots of failures, such as wrong strokes and burned paper," Keram said, adding that it can take two to three months to finish a single piece.

He prefers to make drawings with Xinjiang characteristics, so he travels around the region 13 or 14 times a year for two to three days each time to find inspiration, he said.

Xinjiang's customs glow through Keram's work, such as a joyful man playing the rawap, a local folk instrument, a smiling Uygur girl and a senior holding a naan, Xinjiang's flat bread.

A portrait of a man, titled Grandpa, is his favorite. The Uygur man was photographed by a friend of Keram's in Kashgar, Xinjiang.

The man's slightly frowning brow and deep wrinkles touched the artist, who quickly devoted himself to creating the work, which eventually took 20 days.

"I spent a whole week just drawing the eyebrows," he said, adding that he finds the piece comforting.

"Every time I feel tired, I look at him. No matter what angle you view him from, he always looks back at you."

Lu Wenjie and Mei Shajing in Turpan contributed to this story.