Liu Feiyue is a remarkable character. Already noticed during the Rembrandt Days in Leiden last year, thanks to his distinctive setup, featuring an impressive 150-megapixel digital back mounted on a technical camera, he now presents a solo exhibition at the International Institute for Asian Studies titled Beyond the Mountain: Landscapes beyond the Great Wall. His work truly goes beyond expectations. Presented on a monumental scale, the photographs reveal parts of China we rarely see or imagine: Inner Mongolia. Beyond the mountains and the Great Wall, in what was once considered the outer edges of China, we encounter portraits of local inhabitants of the grasslands, like a wrestler newly crowned champion, a cattle herder, a member of the Communist Party proudly wearing a party badge on his chest. Taken together, the exhibition forms an intimate portrait of a region far removed from our everyday understanding, yet made very familiar through the shared humanity of the people depicted. I would have liked to see more of his photographs, which were not particularly well served by their presentation in a corridor of the building, but I fully enjoyed myself, imagining endless cavalcades across the grasslands on the back of one of these small Mongolian horses.
