Chinese Mingong, Thoughts on Contemporary China, an exhibitiom organized by ifa Village.
“Mingong”: Literally means People Workers.
There are more than 200 million workers living in the heart of the new China. Itinerant workers, un-rooted peasants, working for low salaries, seven days a week, ten hours a day, in extremely difficult conditions. They are building tomorrow’s China, in the shadow...
We can see them everywhere inside the Chinese metropolis. They are working on the demolition sites of the old quarters and on the construction sites of the new high-tech buildings. Some of them, mostly women, are employed in the haircut and massage salons, karaoke bars or restaurants.
Workers live on their workplace, often up to eight in a small room. No air conditioning, no bathroom, and so-called ‘walls’. The Mingongs never leave the construction site, they almost live in autarky.

In this exhibition, Island6 DesignLab team (Thomas Charveriat, Malvina Delesalle, Maxime Gabillet, Oussama Laftimi, Yang Longhai) explores the effects that advertising and mass media nowadays have on our perception and modes of communication. In "Plastic Propaganda", a large engraved Perspex installation, the artists use the propaganda art style of the Cultural Revolution with light humor by switching the revolutionary symbols of the past to commonly seen consumerism elements of our time.