Anna Mikuskova
I was born in the north Bohemian city of Most—an industrial mining town located near the Czech- German border. In the 1970s, the historic center of Most was demolished along with eighty other towns in the area to make way for expanding coal mines. As the towns and villages lined up for demotion, the locations connected to my family history vanished, leaving only memories that too have since paled.
A House with No Walls is an artist book born from my need to fill these voids in family history and geography. The book combines historical maps of the towns before their demolition, photographs of their current state, hand-drawn routes of my walks in the area, and text addressed to my father who was born in Most and whose memories guided me through its past and present.
Photographed in the Czech Republic and in my new home in upstate New York, A House with No Walls invites readers to walk through a real and imaginary landscape, and to consider the fractured identity of regions affected by resource extraction, as well as the impermanence of our concept of home.
