A housing estate on the edge of a quarry, a golden limousine in the middle of nowhere, a llama farm in the backyard of a factory complex, an equestrian statue facing a gas station, a church with a fresco of the Red Army, giant billboards, or endless expanses of open-pit coal mines. The young artist Yutong Xie, originally from China, offers a unique perspective on the transformation of the Czech industrial landscape from the position of an outsider. For a photographer who grew up in a postsocialist country, the Czech landscape is at once familiar and distant. From this perspective, historical traumas of collective memory, the legacy of social engineering, remnants of heavy industry, questionable redevelopment projects, sex tourism, and other borderland industrial activities intertwine, collectively mapping the fragmented space of the Czech periphery. This extensive photographic project, developed across the entire country, tells a story of how society comes to terms with the remnants of socialism while confronting an ongoing and uncertain transformation.

 
Yutong Xie (*1999) is a photographer and cinematographer whose work focuses on the exploration of urban landscapes and peripheral areas, with a particular emphasis on revealing complex relationships between history, politics, and the environments we inhabit. In 2024, he completed his MA at the Studio of Documentary Strategies at FAMU in Prague. He has participated in several group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. He lives and works in Prague.