One day, at the beginning of the 21st century, underprivileged children in Africa received backpacks donated by the United States. Printed on these backpacks were characters from Japanese manga, while a small label bore the words: “Made in China.”
“Made in China” has long ceased to be a mere geographic concept. It is a manufacturing landscape that transcends ideologies, crosses political regimes, and crosses cultural borders.
Within this narrative framework, I present more than 1,500 objects and events made or having taken place in China—objects that each of us has probably encountered or used at some point in our lives. For sixty years, these products have quietly, subtly, and ubiquitously shaped the details of our existence, forming a vast narrative network without origin or center.
This installation, in the form of a paper landscape novel, gathers these 1,500 objects into a book of over 1,500 pages. Each page lies flat on the floor, like a missing person poster, waiting for a spectator or local resident to come and write the continuation—by their footsteps, their body, or their own object—filling in the blanks.
As in Borges’s The Book of Sand, each fragment can become a starting point. From these narrative shards, everyone can inscribe their story onto their surroundings—to rewrite, reactivate, and reconfigure.
These objects confront us with an unavoidable reality: we are constantly traversing these production landscapes.
Until, in this fragile expanse, we hear the echo of our steps—and those of thousands of others.
Until we once again walk this borderland—generous, exhausted, and silent.
