YUXIANG DONG | Central Union Railroad & Saint Denis [2], 2023

Central Union Railroad & Saint Denis (2022-2024) investigates the history of Chinese migrant workers during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad between 1863 and 1869. Through a series of darkroom contact prints with digital negative transfer film made out of video game screenshots, this body of work experiments with the materiality of photography across the digital and the analog and examines contemporary racial representations and historical narratives in the video game industry. Today, the advancement of video game technologies, virtual reality, augmented reality, facial and voice recognition, and wearable device, are extending our sensory perception and transforming our knowledge of nature, history, and personhood. This work explores how the pieces of the real and virtual world interact, fit together or clash, generate complex unforeseen consequences, and reinforce cultural references.

BIO

DONG Yuxiang (born 1990, Wujiang, Jiangsu Province, China) is an art, educational, and social worker. His current practices and research are driven by the contradiction between ethnography in the Anthropocene and speculation of object-oriented ontology. He received an Honorable Mention of the PhMuseum Photography Grant (2023) and was a longlist of The Lumen Prize for Art and Technology (2023) and a finalist of the Three Shadows Photography Award (2016). He has exhibited at Hermitage Museum & Gardens, Norfolk, VA (US), OCAT Institute, Beijing (China); Verzasca Foto, Canton of Ticino (Switzerland); Jakarta International Photo Festival, Jakarta, (Indonesia); PhMuseum Days, PhMuseum, Bologna (Italy); and other international venues. His documentaries and filmic works have been screened at Obskuur Ghent Film Festival (Belgium), Doc.Boston Documentary Film Festival (US), Stay Art Festival (China), and other global festivals.