Thomas Kellner in China: Facets of China at Manufacturing Art in Beijing

“And yet, the people themselves are the most interesting and enduring aspect of his monumental work.” Moritz Neumüller, “A Mirror of Humanity with Structural Fault Lines,” in Thomas Kellner. Facets of the City after August Sander, Seltmann Publishers, Berlin 2025, pp. 26–47.

“Let manufacturers see art, and let artists understand manufacturing.”
— Huang Xiaoli, Chief Curator of Manufacturing Art
(translated from Chinese)

35 Artists, 21 Companies, Eight Months of Co-Creation

In September 2026, Manufacturing Art: Toward Dongguan as a City of Manufacturing Aesthetics brought a multifaceted portrait of Dongguan to Beijing. Presented at Stay Space at Langyuan Station, the exhibition brought together artistic projects developed through direct encounters with Dongguan’s manufacturing industries, their materials, technologies, working environments, and people.

The project involved 35 artists from China, South Korea, Germany, and the United Kingdom, who worked with 21 manufacturing companies in Dongguan over a period of eight months. This collaboration resulted in 29 groups of works comprising several hundred individual pieces, ranging from installation and sound art to digital imagery, mixed media, fashion, and other contemporary artistic forms.

From the Factory Floor to Contemporary Art

Rather than approaching manufacturing solely as an economic or technological phenomenon, Manufacturing Art examined how production, creativity, everyday working life, and cultural identity intersect in a city whose international image has long been shaped by industry.

A central feature of the project was its model of “four-party co-creation”: cultural institutions coordinated the project, the curatorial team provided its conceptual framework, artists worked on site, and manufacturing companies actively participated in the creative process. Chief Curator Shu Yang described this open-ended approach as “blind-box co-creation”: artists entered the companies without predetermined forms for their works, while the companies opened their production environments and provided access to materials, technologies, and technical expertise. The works therefore developed through direct encounters with the companies, their people, materials, technologies, and production environments rather than being conceived independently and subsequently placed in an industrial context.

The People Behind Dongguan Manufacturing

Within this broader exploration, Thomas Kellner participated with Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan, a photographic portrait project created in 18 companies in Dongguan in 2026. While the wider exhibition explored manufacturing from numerous artistic perspectives, Kellner concentrated on the people themselves. His portraits shift attention from factories, machines, and products to the individuals whose knowledge, skills, and work form part of Dongguan’s industrial transformation.

The Beijing exhibition thus presented Dongguan not simply as the “World Factory,” but as a city in the process of reconsidering the relationship between manufacturing, aesthetics, culture, and human experience. Within this larger narrative, Facets of China asks who becomes visible when we look beyond the products and turn instead toward the people who make them.

"Manufacturing Aesthetics is the city’s answer; Manufacturing Art is the path that makes this answer visible.”
— Yangcheng Evening News / Jinyang
(translated from Chinese)

From the “World Factory” to a New Urban Identity

For decades, Dongguan has been closely associated with manufacturing. Located in Guangdong Province in the Pearl River Delta, the city became one of the most important centers of China’s export-oriented industrial development. Its factories and supply chains connected Dongguan with markets around the world and helped establish its familiar image as the “World Factory.”

Today, Dongguan is seeking to develop this identity further. At the end of 2024, the city systematically introduced the concept of “Manufacturing Aesthetics,” followed in 2026 by a set of measures intended to strengthen the relationship between industrial production, design, culture, and aesthetic development. The concept encompasses six interconnected dimensions: design, craftsmanship, production, products, humanities, and ideas. In 2026, Dongguan further developed this approach through a package of 13 measures intended to connect manufacturing more closely with design, cultural production, public communication, and the development of the city’s identity.

What Does “Manufacturing Aesthetics” Mean?

At its core, Manufacturing Aesthetics does not simply mean adding an attractive appearance to an industrial product after it has been made. It asks us to recognize the aesthetic qualities already present throughout the manufacturing process: in design decisions, materials, craftsmanship, technical precision, production methods, and the knowledge required to transform an idea into an object.

The idea did not emerge in isolation. Cultural projects in Dongguan had already been exploring the relationship between the city, manufacturing, and contemporary art for several years. Chinese reporting on Manufacturing Art traces this development back to projects including Dongguan Effect in 2018, subsequent photographic explorations of manufacturing, and further artistic projects that gradually shifted attention from industrial output toward the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of production.

Manufacturing as a Field for Art

“Manufacturing Art” translated this concept into an artistic context. The participating artists entered Dongguan’s manufacturing environments and responded to the processes, materials, technologies, spaces, and people they encountered there. The exhibition therefore moved beyond the conventional separation between industrial production and artistic creation. Manufacturing became something to observe, question, interpret, and transform through art.

The Human Dimension of Manufacturing

The human dimension is essential to this perspective. Chinese material accompanying the exhibition explicitly directs attention toward the ordinary people working on the front lines of industry and toward the individual stories of workers and entrepreneurs. This is where Thomas Kellner’s “Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan” enters the larger narrative of Manufacturing Aesthetics: his photographs turn from what Dongguan manufactures to the people who make manufacturing possible.

“This exhibition attempts to reconsider the history of modern and contemporary art through manufacturing as a fundamental form of human development.”
— Shu Yang, Chief Curator
(translated from Chinese)

Manufacturing Art brought together artists from China, South Korea, Germany, and the United Kingdom whose practices span photography, sound, installation, sculpture, mixed media, traditional crafts, and other contemporary artistic forms. Rather than illustrating Dongguan’s manufacturing economy, the artists used the city’s factories as places of encounter and experimentation. Materials, industrial processes, specialized knowledge, working environments, entrepreneurs, and employees became potential starting points for artistic work.

Materials, Technologies, and Industrial Processes as Artistic Media

The resulting works reveal how differently artists responded to Dongguan’s manufacturing environment. Zhu Luming, for example, worked with ultra-fine 0.01 mm drill technology supplied by Dingtai High-Tech, using precision perforation techniques on shell paper. Liu Bin transformed elastic textiles and color-changing pigments from Changlian New Material into soft sculptures whose structures and changing surfaces evoke organic or cellular forms. Ye Xiaoling, a practitioner of traditional Dongguan grass weaving, incorporated optical fibre into woven objects, bringing a contemporary industrial material into dialogue with an established local craft tradition.

Listening to the Factory

Qin Siyuan approached manufacturing through sound. During visits to Dongguan factories, he recorded industrial sounds ranging from production machinery to ceramic firing, logistics, and food processing. Using synthesis, sampling, and spatial audio, he deconstructed and reorganized these sounds into an immersive sound environment, transforming noises normally treated as an unavoidable by-product of manufacturing into material for artistic perception.

Workers, Memory, and Personal Experience

Other artists approached manufacturing through the experiences of the people working within it. Zhou Zhiyuan, who has a medical background, collaborated with a pharmaceutical company and used processes associated with pharmaceutical production to transform memories of home cooking shared by female workers into an installation of “nostalgia pills.” Kim Soonim focused on the relationship between working women and family life. Her work Female Worker Mothers and Children used wrapping and weaving techniques to create three-dimensional figures based on mothers working in manufacturing and their children.

Thomas Kellner: The Human Being as a Point of Departure

Within this international and interdisciplinary constellation, Thomas Kellner chose the human being as his point of departure. While other artistic positions transformed industrial materials, sounds, technologies, and personal experiences into new artistic forms, Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan concentrates on the individuals within the manufacturing environment.

Kellner’s contribution therefore introduces a distinct photographic perspective into the larger investigation of Dongguan manufacturing: rather than transforming the material of production, he turns toward the people whose knowledge, experience, and work make production possible.

“…to look not only at output and efficiency, but also at the texture of materials, the precision of craftsmanship, and the human warmth behind manufacturing.”
— Yangcheng Evening News / Jinyang
(translated from Chinese)

94 Portraits from 18 Manufacturing Companies

For “Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan,” Thomas Kellner photographed 94 people in 18 manufacturing companies in Dongguan in 2026. Instead of turning his camera toward products, machinery, or the monumental scale of industrial production, he focused on the individuals whose knowledge, skills, and everyday work are part of Dongguan’s manufacturing culture.

The project was developed in cooperation with Shu Yang, Eshu Art House, and the Dongguan Culture Center. Access to the participating companies allowed Kellner to encounter people in very different working environments and areas of manufacturing. The workplace provides the social and economic context of the portraits, but it does not determine their meaning: the person remains the subject of the photograph.

From Individual Portraits to a Portrait of Society

This distinction is central to “Facets of China.” Kellner does not attempt to create a catalogue of professions or a corporate representation of Dongguan’s industries. Each portrait begins with an individual. Only through the accumulation of many individual photographs does another image gradually emerge: a photographic portrait of a society shaped by manufacturing.

From Deyang to Dongguan

The project also brings together two strands that had appeared earlier in Kellner’s work in China. In 2006, during his first journey to the country, he created The People from Deyang, a series of 140 portraits conceived as a cross-section of the population of Deyang in Sichuan Province. A decade later, his engagement with industrial photography in Shenyang and Tiexi placed the relationship between people and industry within another context. In Dongguan in 2026, portraiture and industrial culture become part of the same photographic investigation.

The Human Dimension of Manufacturing

Within Manufacturing Art, this human perspective has a particular resonance. Chinese reporting on the exhibition emphasizes that Dongguan’s emerging idea of Manufacturing Aesthetics is concerned not only with production and efficiency, but also with craftsmanship, creativity and the “human warmth” within manufacturing. Kellner’s contribution approaches this question through the people themselves.

Facets of China is therefore not a portrait of factories. It is a portrait of the people within them — and, through them, of contemporary Dongguan.

Huang Xiaoli (黄晓丽) is Director of the Dongguan Culture Center and Director of the Dongguan Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center. She has led the Dongguan Culture Center since 2016 and has played an important role in developing new models of public cultural participation in a city whose identity has been profoundly shaped by manufacturing and migration. She is also a representative of the Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress.

Her professional work reaches beyond the conventional understanding of a municipal cultural institution. Under Huang Xiaoli, the Dongguan Culture Center has increasingly defined itself as a platform that connects cultural institutions, artists, citizens, communities and creative industries. Huang describes the institution not only as a provider of cultural programs, but as a creative planner, connector and integrator of resources. This approach has shaped projects ranging from public art education and intangible cultural heritage to the Greater Bay Area cultural initiatives and, more recently, Dongguan’s concept of Manufacturing Aesthetics.

A photographer looking at working people

There is an especially significant connection to Thomas Kellner’s Facets of China. Huang Xiaoli is herself closely involved with photography. Chinese sources identify her as a research-level specialist in mass/public culture, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Women Photographers Association and Chair of the Photography Committee of the China Culture Centers Association. She has received distinctions from both the China Women Photographers Association and the Guangdong Photographers Association.

Her own photographic work has addressed precisely the relationship between people, work and Dongguan’s industrial transformation. Her project Building Dreams – The Stories of Female Workers in Chang’an, Dongguan was exhibited at institutions including the China Women and Children’s Museum and the Xu Xiaobing and Hou Bo Memorial Museum, as well as at exhibitions in Shenzhen, Yunnan and the Czech Republic. Chinese sources also mention her series Chinese Women Workers.

This makes her involvement in Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan particularly relevant. The connection should not be overstated as a direct artistic influence unless further sources confirm it. Yet there is a clear thematic proximity: both Huang Xiaoli and Thomas Kellner have used photography to turn attention toward individuals whose lives are connected with Dongguan’s world of manufacturing and work.

Public culture in a city of migration

Huang Xiaoli’s understanding of Dongguan is closely connected with the particular social structure of the city. As early as the Culture Center’s development strategy for 2021, cultural services for migrant workers were explicitly identified as an important part of Dongguan’s public cultural system. One stated objective was to use culture and art to tell the stories of the people who had come to Dongguan to work and live.

This perspective is important for understanding the cultural context in which Facets of China emerged. Dongguan cannot be understood solely through its factories or economic statistics. Its industrial growth has been accompanied by the movement of millions of people who came to the city for work and contributed to its transformation.

For Huang, public culture therefore has a social function. She has argued for cultural institutions that do more than organize events: they should create opportunities for participation, artistic education and identification with the city. Her vision is of the Culture Center as a place embedded in everyday life rather than separated from it.

From the “World Factory” to Manufacturing Aesthetics

This approach has acquired a new dimension through Dongguan’s concept of Manufacturing Aesthetics. Introduced by the city in 2024, the concept seeks to reconsider manufacturing through six dimensions: design, craftsmanship, production, products, humanities and ideas. Manufacturing is thereby understood not only through efficiency and technological capability, but also through aesthetic, cultural and human values.

Huang Xiaoli has become one of the cultural advocates translating this idea into public practice. At the 2025 Greater Bay Area cultural fair, the Dongguan Culture Center structured its program around these six dimensions. Huang described the event as an urban cultural practice intended to make the complete aesthetic value chain—from creative conception and production to craftsmanship and ideas—visible and accessible to the public.

Her interpretation goes beyond improving the appearance of manufactured products. She connects Manufacturing Aesthetics with the cultural character of Dongguan itself. In an interview with Nanfang Daily, Huang argued that the ambition to become a “City of Manufacturing Aesthetics” represents a conscious cultural choice for Dongguan: the practical, collaborative and precision-oriented spirit of manufacturing should meet an aesthetic culture characterized by openness, inclusiveness and the pursuit of excellence.

For her, culture consequently becomes part of urban and industrial transformation rather than an addition to it.

Connecting culture and industry

One of Huang Xiaoli’s recurring ideas is the role of the cultural institution as a connector. The Dongguan Culture Center has sought to bring together cultural practitioners, designers, companies, traditional crafts and citizens. Projects have deliberately sent cultural creators into manufacturing companies and industrial clusters so that new forms of collaboration can emerge.

The same principle can be seen in Manufacturing Art. The project established a model in which municipal cultural institutions coordinated the program, curators provided artistic direction, artists entered companies and manufacturing enterprises opened their workplaces, materials and technological knowledge to artistic experimentation.

Huang Xiaoli summarized the intended encounter succinctly:

“Let manufacturers see art, and let artists understand manufacturing.”

For Huang, the Beijing exhibition was not intended as the conclusion of this process but as the beginning of a continuing exploration of the relationship between manufacturing and aesthetics in Dongguan.

Huang Xiaoli and Manufacturing Art

The official Beijing exhibition poster names Huang Xiaoli and Shu Yang as Chief Curators of Manufacturing Art: Toward Dongguan as a City of Manufacturing Aesthetics, with Li Zhiliang as Artistic Director and You Yang as Exhibition Consultant.

Huang Xiaoli’s position within the project can therefore be understood as more than that of an institutional organizer. Her work connects several of the exhibition’s central ideas: the transformation of Dongguan’s industrial identity, public participation in culture, the recognition of people within manufacturing, and the attempt to bring artistic and industrial forms of creativity into direct contact.

This is also where her work intersects particularly closely with Thomas Kellner’s 94 portraits from 18 Dongguan companies. Facets of China directs attention away from the anonymous idea of the “World Factory” and toward individual people. That perspective corresponds with a broader principle visible in Huang Xiaoli’s cultural work: a city shaped by manufacturing must also be understood through the people who shape it.

Li Zhiliang (李志良) is Artistic Director of Manufacturing Art: Toward Dongguan as a City of Manufacturing Aesthetics and one of the participating artists in the exhibition. Born in Dongguan, he brings more than three decades of experience in photography and a sustained engagement with China’s industrial transformation. His career connects artistic practice, photographic scholarship, institutional development, and the cultural history of one of China’s most important manufacturing regions.

Giving Chinese Manufacturing a Human Face

Born in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, Li Zhiliang has dedicated much of his professional life to examining the relationship between industry, technology, labor, and visual culture. Few photographers have documented the evolution of China's manufacturing economy with comparable depth and continuity. His photographic practice is driven by a central ambition: to give Chinese manufacturing a human face. Rather than depicting factories merely as places of production, he understands them as social environments in which innovation, craftsmanship, technological progress, and human labor converge.

Made in China and Dongguan Manufacturing

This vision is reflected in his long-term photographic projects, most notably Made in China and Dongguan Manufacturing, which have become landmark bodies of work within contemporary Chinese industrial photography. These series move beyond conventional documentary photography by revealing the aesthetic structures of industrial production while emphasizing the people whose knowledge and labor sustain them. Engineers, technicians, designers, machine operators, managers, researchers, and skilled workers appear not simply as employees but as protagonists of China's unprecedented industrial transformation.

Photography, Institutions and National Recognition

Li Zhiliang has played a decisive role in shaping photography as both an artistic and documentary discipline in China. He serves as Vice Chairman of the China Industrial Photography Association, Director of the China Photographers Association, and Director of the China Photographers Copyright Association. Within Guangdong Province, he has held several influential leadership positions, including Vice Chairman of the 10th and 11th Guangdong Photographers Association, Director of its Mobile Imaging Committee, and Director of its Curatorial Committee. He also served as President of the 7th and 8th Dongguan Photographers Association, contributing significantly to the professionalization of photography throughout southern China.

His artistic achievements have received national recognition. Li Zhiliang was awarded the 13th China Photography Golden Statue Award (Art Category), China's highest distinction in photography, and later served as a juror for the 14th China Photography Golden Statue Award, reflecting the esteem in which he is held by the country's photographic community.

Exhibitions in China and Internationally

His major photographic projects have been exhibited at leading institutions and festivals throughout China. The Made in China series has been presented at the Liuzhou Industrial Museum, the Dongjiang Lake Photography Art Museum, the Shanghai Pudong Cultural Center, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, and the Dali International Photography Exhibition. His solo exhibition The Beauty of Order explored the visual language of industrial systems while introducing new models of intellectual property licensing for photographic art. Another important exhibition, Dongguan Manufacturing – Traction Line, was presented at the China Photography Exhibition Hall, further establishing his reputation as one of China's foremost interpreters of industrial culture.

Internationally, Li Zhiliang's work has attracted growing attention. His Dongguan Manufacturing series was exhibited at the 27th Photo LA Art Fair in the United States and later presented at PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, where it introduced international audiences to the visual complexity of Chinese manufacturing. Selected works also became part of the landmark exhibition Images Witness Forty Years, presented at the National Museum of China, documenting four decades of China's social and economic transformation.

Several of his photographs have achieved iconic status within contemporary Chinese photography. Works such as Major Instruments of the Nation and Microchip Interior Structure (2018) were selected for the national exhibition celebrating the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China under the title Our Chinese Dream. His photograph Dialogue was included in the prestigious collection One Hundred Chinese Photographers – One Hundred Masterworks, which subsequently toured museums and exhibition venues across China.

Editor, Historian and Organizer of Photographic Culture

Beyond his own artistic production, Li Zhiliang has made substantial contributions as an editor, historian, and organizer of photographic culture. He served as chief editor of the comprehensive publication Forty Years of Chinese Landscape Photography and initiated several pioneering regional photographic chronicles, including Chang'an Photographic Chronicle, the first photographic history of a Chinese town, followed by monographic publications documenting the work of important photographers such as Liang Huixiang, Yangtze River, and Gu Di. These publications have become valuable resources for the historiography of Chinese photography.

Building a Culture of Photography in Dongguan

Equally significant is his role as a cultural organizer. In 2007, Li Zhiliang successfully initiated the designation of Chang'an as Guangdong Province's first "Photography Town." Two years later, he led the successful application that established Chang'an as China's first national Photography Town at township level, an achievement that profoundly influenced photographic education and cultural tourism in the region. Between 2007 and 2019, he facilitated a long-term partnership between Chang'an and the China Photographers Association, enabling the town to host six consecutive National Photography Theory Conferences. From 2014 to 2022, he also conceived and curated the annual China • Dongguan Chang'an Photography Week, one of southern China's most important photographic events.

Recognition and Cultural Leadership

Li Zhiliang's contributions have been recognized through numerous honors beyond photography itself. He became China's first officially certified expert for photographic copyright authentication in 2014. In 2018, the Dongguan Federation of Literary and Art Circles established the Dongguan Photography Masters Studio under his direction. He was named Dongguan Distinguished Artist in 2019, received the title Guangdong Outstanding Mid-Career Artist in 2022, and in 2024 the Guangdong Federation of Literary and Art Circles established the Guangdong Distinguished Arts Masters Studio in recognition of his exceptional contribution to photography and cultural development.

Li Zhiliang and Manufacturing Art

As Artistic Director and participating artist of Manufacturing Art, Li Zhiliang contributes an exceptional knowledge of Dongguan’s industrial culture. His long engagement with manufacturing, labor and photographic documentation brings a perspective to the exhibition that has developed from within the city itself. His work connects industrial processes with the people, knowledge and experience behind them, reinforcing one of the exhibition’s central ideas: manufacturing is not only a system of production, but also a cultural and human environment.

From Dongguan to Beijing

From September 12 to 27, 2026, “Manufacturing Art: Toward Dongguan as a City of Manufacturing Aesthetics” was presented at Stay Space, located in Building E4 on the grounds of Langyuan Station in Beijing’s Chaoyang District. The exhibition brought the artistic projects developed in Dongguan into the cultural context of China’s capital.

The move from Dongguan to Beijing was significant to the exhibition’s narrative. The works originated through direct encounters with Dongguan’s manufacturing companies, production environments, materials, technologies, and people. At Stay Space, these individual artistic responses came together to form a larger portrait of a city seeking to expand its identity beyond the familiar image of the “World Factory.”

Making – Manufacturing – Creating

The Beijing presentation followed the conceptual progression “making – manufacturing – creating”, allowing visitors to encounter the different ways in which the participating artists transformed their experiences of Dongguan into artistic works. Manufacturing was presented not merely as the background to the exhibition, but as a cultural process involving experimentation, knowledge, creativity, and human experience.

Facets of China in Beijing

Within this setting, Thomas Kellner presented “Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan.” His portraits brought the people he had encountered in Dongguan’s companies into the exhibition space in Beijing. Surrounded by artistic positions responding to different aspects of manufacturing, Kellner’s contribution placed the individual human being at the center of this wider exploration of Dongguan.

The presentation at Stay Space at Langyuan Station therefore connected two places and two perspectives: Dongguan as the environment in which the projects originated, and Beijing as the place in which these different artistic interpretations of the city were brought together and presented to a wider public.

The presentation of “Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan” in Beijing was not conceived as the conclusion of the project. Rather, it marked another stage in Thomas Kellner’s engagement with Dongguan and with the question of how a society shaped by manufacturing can be portrayed through the people who form part of it.

What began with encounters and portrait sessions in 18 companies in Dongguan developed into a collective photographic portrait. In Beijing, these individual encounters entered a broader public and cultural context through “Manufacturing Art: Toward Dongguan as a City of Manufacturing Aesthetics”

The project also opens a dialogue beyond Dongguan. Questions about work, technological transformation, individual identity, and the relationship between people and economic structures are not limited to one Chinese manufacturing city. They are part of a much wider discussion about contemporary societies and the ways in which they represent themselves.

For Kellner, “Facets of China” therefore continues an artistic investigation that places the individual within a larger social picture. The Beijing exhibition in September 2026 became one chapter in this continuing development rather than its endpoint.

“Whether this path will succeed still needs to be tested over time, but a concrete model of transformation is already growing out of Dongguan’s factory workshops.”
— Dongguan Radio & Television
(translated from Chinese)

Twenty Years of Photographic Exchange

Thomas Kellner’s “Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan” stands at the intersection of several strands of his work that have developed through his relationship with China over the past twenty years: portraiture, industrial culture, and international photographic exchange.

Kellner first traveled to China in 2006. In Deyang, Sichuan Province, he created “The People from Deyang,” a series of 140 portraits conceived as a cross-section of the city’s population. In the same year, he participated as a portfolio reviewer at the first FotoFest Meeting Place Beijing. What began with photographing people and engaging with the Chinese photographic community developed into a long-term relationship with the country.

From Portraiture to Industrial Photography

A second strand emerged through industrial photography. In 2015, Kellner curated an exhibition on industrial photography in Shenyang. A year later, he received an Award of Excellence at the 2nd International Industrial Photography Festival in Shenyang/Tiexi and curated industria vitalis at the Shenyang Museum of China Industry. In 2019, this engagement continued in Liaoning with the exhibitions Transition and Götz Diergarten – Auf Bötzow, curated by Kellner for the International Photography Festival in Beizhen.

At the same time, China increasingly became a place of curatorial and photographic exchange. Beginning with projects such as China Photo and followed by numerous exhibitions at the Pingyao International Photography Festival, Kellner worked not only as an artist but also as a curator and juror. His activities took him to Beijing, Chengdu, Shenyang, Hefei, Pingyao, Beizhen, and Quanzhou, among other places. Between 2013 and 2025, he repeatedly curated international photography exhibitions in China and served several times on the jury of the Pingyao International Photography Festival.

Deyang 2006 – Dongguan 2026

Looking back from 2026, “Facets of China” brings these different strands together. The portrait of society that had already appeared in The People from Deyang in 2006 meets Kellner’s later engagement with industrial culture and his long experience of exchange with Chinese photographers, curators, institutions, and audiences.

The twenty-year interval between Deyang 2006 and Dongguan 2026 is particularly significant. In both projects, Kellner turns his camera toward people in a Chinese city. Yet Facets of China places them specifically within the world of contemporary manufacturing. The individual portrait and the industrial environment, previously explored along different paths, now become part of the same photographic investigation.

Dongguan 2026 is therefore not simply another destination in Thomas Kellner’s history with China. It is a point at which twenty years of encounters, portraiture, industrial photography, and cultural exchange converge — once again with the people themselves at the center.

Where Art Meets Manufacturing: Participating Companies in Dongguan

Dongguan is one of China's major manufacturing centers, shaped by an extraordinary range of industries, materials, technologies, skills, and people. For Manufacturing Art, artists from China and abroad enter this world of production, working with companies and their employees and approaching manufacturing from different artistic perspectives. The participating companies represent a broad spectrum of Dongguan's industrial culture—from traditional materials and craftsmanship to consumer products, precision engineering, robotics, intelligent logistics, and advanced technologies. They are not simply sponsors or backdrops for the exhibition: their factories, products, processes, materials, knowledge, and, above all, the people who work there form an essential part of the project's encounter between contemporary art and manufacturing.

“These works do the same thing: they move manufacturing from backstage to center stage.”
— Yangcheng Evening News / Jinyang
(translated from Chinese)

广东拓斯达科技股份有限公司 – Guangdong Topstar Technology Co.,Ltd.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Dongguan, Guangdong Topstar Technology Co., Ltd. develops technologies for automated and intelligent manufacturing. The company, which has been listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since 2017, works in fields including industrial robotics, CNC machine tools, injection-molding technology, automation, and intelligent manufacturing systems. Its activities increasingly extend into AI-supported robotics, including humanoid and quadruped robots. Within Manufacturing Art, Topstar represents a sector in which Dongguan's industrial development is moving from conventional manufacturing toward increasingly automated, interconnected, and intelligent forms of production.

东莞市富易达塑胶制品有限公司 – Dongguan Fuyida Plastic Products Co.,Ltd.

Dongguan Fuyida Plastic Products Co., Ltd. was one of the Dongguan manufacturing companies involved in Thomas Kellner’s Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan. Its participation formed part of the project’s broader encounter with the people and working environments of Dongguan’s manufacturing economy. Rather than functioning merely as an industrial backdrop, the company became one of the places in which Kellner encountered individuals whose portraits contribute to the collective image of contemporary Dongguan. 

东莞市微石文化科技有限公司 – Dongguan Weishi Culture Technology Co.,Ltd.

Dongguan Weishi Culture Technology Co.,Ltd. combines precision manufacturing with design, model-making, and contemporary popular culture. Its activities include the development and production of detailed metal models and construction kits, while its Piececool brand has become associated with intricate three-dimensional metal puzzles and collectible models. Wist brings together product development, design, manufacturing, branding, and customized model production. Its participation in Manufacturing Art demonstrates how Dongguan's industrial capabilities can extend beyond functional manufacturing into cultural products in which engineering precision, craftsmanship, design, and creativity are closely connected.

广东哈一代玩具股份有限公司 –Guangdong Hayidai Toy Co., LTD.

Founded in 1999 and based in Dongguan, Guangdong Hayidai Toys Co., Ltd. specializes in the development and manufacture of plush, fabric, and interactive toys. Its production ranges from conventional soft toys and mascots to products incorporating sound, movement, recording, electronic functions, and digital interaction. The company has also been involved in the production of licensed mascots and products associated with major events. Hayidai represents an industry closely associated with Dongguan's international manufacturing history: toy production. At the same time, its development illustrates how this sector has evolved through design, electronics, customization, and increasingly sophisticated production processes.

广东印象派服装有限公司 –Guangdong Yinxiangpai Garments Co.Ltd / INICIO

INICIO (印象草原) is the core brand of Guangdong Impressionist Clothing Co., Ltd., a Dongguan-based fashion company founded in 2003 and rooted in Dalang, one of China’s major centers of wool and knitwear production. The company combines fashion design, cashmere and wool textiles, flexible manufacturing, plant-dyeing techniques, and elements of intangible cultural heritage. Within Manufacturing Art, INICIO represents an encounter between contemporary manufacturing and forms of textile knowledge in which industrial production, craftsmanship, material culture, and human experience remain closely connected. Chinese reporting on the exhibition also draws attention to the company’s continued use of manual production processes and to the experienced female workers associated with them.

马可波罗控股股份有限公司 – Marcopolo Holdings Co., Ltd.

Marco Polo is one of China's prominent brands for architectural ceramics and tiles. Associated with Guangdong Wonderful Ceramics Co., Ltd., the company has developed extensive expertise in ceramic production, research, product development, surface design, and architectural applications. Dongguan plays an important role in the company's history and industrial presence. Within Manufacturing Art, Marco Polo introduces ceramics as both an industrial material and a designed surface, connecting large-scale manufacturing with architecture, material knowledge, technology, and aesthetic decisions. The company therefore represents particularly clearly the exhibition's interest in the relationship between making, manufacturing, and aesthetics.

广东鼎泰高科技术股份有限公司 Guangdong Dtech Technology Co., Ltd.

Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Houjie, Dongguan, Guangdong Dtech Technology Co., Ltd. develops and manufactures precision tools, materials, and equipment for advanced industrial production. Its portfolio includes PCB drill bits and routers, CNC cutting tools, grinding and polishing materials, and automated manufacturing equipment. These technologies serve sectors including electronics, precision manufacturing, and other high-tech industries. Dingtai represents an aspect of manufacturing that often remains invisible in the finished consumer product: the highly specialized tools and technologies required to manufacture components with extreme precision.

慕思健康睡眠股份有限公司 – De Rucci Healthy Sleep Co. Ltd.

De Rucci Healthy Sleep Co. Ltd., known in China as 慕思 and internationally through the DeRUCCI brand, is headquartered in Dongguan and specializes in sleep systems and related home products. Established in 2004, the company combines research, design, manufacturing, retail, and services focused on sleep and living environments and has been listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since 2022. Its participation broadens the industrial spectrum of Manufacturing Art from machines and components to products directly connected with everyday human life. Here, manufacturing encompasses materials, ergonomics, design, technology, industrial production, and the fundamental human need for rest.

东莞市鼎艺创意文化有限公司 – Dongguan Dingyi Creative Culture Co., Ltd.

Founded in 2012, Dongguan Dingyi  Creative Culture Co., Ltd. operates at the intersection of cultural production, design, manufacturing, and contemporary collectible culture. Its work includes collectible figures and art toys, sculptures, large-scale installations, commercial displays, and cultural and leisure projects. The company integrates creative development with production and realization, demonstrating how manufacturing expertise can become an integral part of cultural and artistic products. Within Manufacturing Art, Dingyi exemplifies the increasingly fluid boundary between factory production, design, popular culture, and creative industries.

东莞市三基音响科技有限公司 – 3G Audio Technology Co.,Ltd. / Beta Three

3G Audio Technology Co.,Ltd., known through its Beta Three brand, specializes in professional audio technology. Based in Dongguan, the company develops and manufactures loudspeaker systems, amplifiers, electronic components and professional sound solutions used in venues, theaters, cinemas, events, and other applications. Research, engineering, testing, and industrial production come together in the creation of products whose ultimate purpose is not primarily visual but acoustic. Within Manufacturing Art, Beta Three therefore introduces another dimension of manufacturing culture: the production of technologies that shape how people experience sound, music, performance, and public space. 

东莞长联新材料科技股份有限公司 – Dongguan Changlian New Materials Technology Co., Ltd. / CLT

Founded in 2009, Dongguan Changlian New Material Technology Co., Ltd. develops materials and technologies for textile and garment printing. Its products include water-based printing inks and pastes, resins, digital printing inks, silicones, and related printing technologies. These materials form part of the industrial processes behind contemporary clothing and textile production and connect chemical and material research with printing, color, surface, and design. Within Manufacturing Art, CLT makes visible an often overlooked stage of global manufacturing: the specialized materials and technical knowledge that make the appearance and tactile qualities of finished textiles possible.

广东顺力智能物流装备股份有限公司 – Guangdong Sunli Intelligent Logistics Equipment Co., LTD.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Gaobu, Dongguan, Guangdong Sunli Intelligent Logistics Equipment Co., Ltd. develops and manufactures equipment and systems for intelligent warehousing and industrial logistics. Its solutions include storage and racking systems, automated storage and retrieval technology, automated guided vehicles, and related control and logistics systems. Modern manufacturing depends not only on making objects but also on organizing the movement of materials and products through increasingly complex production and distribution networks. Sunli therefore represents the logistical infrastructure behind contemporary industry and the growing role of automation in managing the flow of goods.

东莞市墩墩家服饰有限公司 – Dongguan Dundunjia Clothing Co., Ltd.

Dundunjia (墩墩家) is associated with Xiangyunsha, a traditional Chinese silk textile whose distinctive appearance results from a complex process of dyeing and finishing. The brand connects this traditional material and its cultural heritage with contemporary clothing, design, and communication. Its presence in Manufacturing Art is particularly significant within the exhibition's broader narrative of making – manufacturing – creating, in which traditional craftsmanship forms part of the historical foundation from which contemporary industrial culture has developed. Dundunjia thus brings together intangible cultural heritage, textile knowledge, craftsmanship, fashion, and contemporary design.

广东东阳光药业股份有限公司 – Guangdong Dongyangguang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. / HEC Group

Guangdong Dongyangguang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., part of HEC Group, represents the pharmaceutical and biomedical sector within Dongguan’s manufacturing landscape. Its highly controlled production processes combine scientific research, specialized technologies, and industrial manufacturing. Within Manufacturing Art, the company became the setting for Zhou Zhiyuan’s artistic exploration of memory and pharmaceutical production, in which recollections of home cooking shared by female workers were transformed into an installation of “nostalgia pills.”

广东省蝴蝶夫体育用品有限公司Hudef Sport Inc.

HUDEF develops and manufactures sports equipment, with a particular focus on pickleball. Since 2017, the brand has concentrated especially on paddles and related equipment, exploring different materials, surfaces, core constructions, and manufacturing technologies. The company connects Dongguan's established expertise in producing goods for international markets with a rapidly developing global sports sector. Within Manufacturing Art, HUDEF represents an industry in which material engineering, product design, manufacturing precision, athletic performance, and changing forms of leisure intersect.

广东美信科技股份有限公司 – Guangdong Misun Technology Co., Ltd.

Guangdong Misun Technology Co., Ltd. was one of the 18 Dongguan companies in which Thomas Kellner photographed employees for Facets of China – The Working People of Dongguan. The company provided one of the industrial environments in which the project developed through direct encounters with people at their workplaces. Within Kellner’s series, the emphasis therefore lies not on the company as a corporate entity, but on the individuals whose working lives form part of the larger social and industrial fabric of contemporary Dongguan.

华美食品集团 – Huamei Food Group

Huamei Food is a Dongguan-based food manufacturer particularly known for mooncakes and other bakery products. Within Manufacturing Art, photographer Liu Yixuan worked inside the company’s mooncake production environment for his project The Same Moon. Using Polaroid photography, he photographed mooncakes produced on the factory line, while employees contributed personal messages connected with people they missed or thought about. The collaboration transformed a standardized industrial product into a starting point for individual memories and emotional experience.

广东亨通光电科技有限公司 – Guangdong Hengtong Optic-Electric Technology Co., Ltd.

Guangdong Hengtong Optic-Electric Technology Co., Ltd. is part of the Hengtong Group, an international technology group active in optical communication, energy and related infrastructure. The company represents the technologically advanced manufacturing sector within the Manufacturing Art project and connects Dongguan’s industrial production with the global development of communication technologies.

东莞市华通包装有限公司 – Dongguanshi Huatong Packaging Co., Ltd.

Dongguanshi Huatong Packaging Co., Ltd. represents Dongguan’s packaging industry within the Manufacturing Art project. As a manufacturing company in a sector closely connected to industrial production, logistics and distribution, it adds another facet to the broad spectrum of enterprises involved in the exhibition.

东莞市贝阁科技有限公司Dongguan Beck Technology Co., Ltd.

Dongguan Beck Technology Co., Ltd. is a technology company based in Dongguan. Within the Manufacturing Art project, the company represents the combination of specialized manufacturing, product development and technology that characterizes the diverse industrial landscape of the region.

矮仔祥（广东）食品有限公司Aizaixiang (Guangdong) Food Co., Ltd.

Aizaixiang (Guangdong) Food Co., Ltd. represents the food manufacturing sector within the Manufacturing Art project. Its participation broadens the exhibition’s perspective beyond technology and industrial equipment and demonstrates that Dongguan’s manufacturing culture also encompasses the production of everyday consumer goods and regional food products.