Camp on the road to Ghulja, Mongolkure

Drawing in collaboration with Killing Architects for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

“Camp on the road to Ghulja, Mongolkure” is a drawing I made of a detention camp for Muslims built by the Chinese government in Xinjiang for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (curated by Lesley Lokko).

The information depicted in this drawing of this camp came from interviews with three former detainees who were held there, satellite imagery, Chinese prison construction regulations, reports by the UN and Amnesty International, and leaked documents reported on by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Adrian Zenz.

Killing Architects conducted research into the network of detention camps for Muslims built by the Chinese government in Xinjiang. For this research, they used satellite images, 3D modeling, and analysis of Chinese prison construction regulations. To ensure the information met journalistic standards, they cross-checked findings with satellite imagery and communicated clearly about the levels of certainty of the information.

Since 2016, an estimated one million or more Muslim minorities have been imprisoned in a secret network of detention camps and prisons in Xinjiang, China. The Uyghurs are the largest affected group. According to the Chinese government, the camps are part of an education program to combat “extremism.” In practice, people were sometimes held for years for religious expression or other behavior deemed undesirable, such as downloading WhatsApp or studying abroad.

In 2018, when this investigation began, it was believed that one million people were detained and that 1,200 camps existed, even though only a few dozen had been located. Little was known about the system of camps the Chinese government built in Xinjiang for the mass detention of Muslims or about where the missing individuals had “disappeared.” 

The installation for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is the result of a joint investigation by Alison Killing (architect), Megha Rajagopalan (journalist), and Christo Buschek (software developer) for BuzzFeed News. In 2021, their investigation received the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

Exhibition: Alison Killing, Shumi Bose, Ekaterina Anchevskaya, Jan Rothuizen, Zachary Sigelko, and Anna Moreno. Supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.