All across Xinjiang, the logograms of the Chinese language sit smugly below the teeth of the Uyghur Arabic script, each pictograph a comfortable caramel morsel in the mouth of the molar abjad. If there is a home for the Turkic languages, a group that extends from the Balkans to the Himalayas, it is not a…

Li Liao’s “Art is Vacuum” starts with a low-ceilinged vestibule housing documentation of a spat between himself, his pregnant girlfriend Yang Jun, and her brother and father. The father virulently rejects their relationship and derides Li’s career prospects by remarking, “You’re living in [a] vacuum.” Their argument is displayed alongside a torn sweater and a…