Chloe Dewe Mathews: China’s Wild West

China’s Wild West is an acerbic and provocative series of photographs by Chloe Dewe Mathews focussing on the contested lives of a sparse populace in China’s Xinjiang region. There is a state of suspension in some of the photos when the viewer begins to question what it is they are actually looking at, asking whether some post manipulation has been employed. But there is none and such clever stop-in-your-tracks devices only add to the underlying narrative of the people that Mathews captures – their story being one of surveillance, suppression and discrimination.