Skip to main content

At a Chinese art museum, an iPad on a pedestal

At a Chinese art museum, an iPad on a pedestal

Share this story

iPad at Chinese art museum (C) New Yorker
iPad at Chinese art museum (C) New Yorker

The New Yorker reports that the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing has a curious new exhibit from a performance artist name Li Liao, who used to work at a company named Foxconn. For 45 days, he helped assemble iPads by looking for flawed printed circuit boards, and saved his wages to buy one for himself. The artifacts from his time at the Shenzhen factory are now up for public display: Liao's white uniform, badges, a framed contract, and the iPad he helped assemble and then bought. "I don't think this experience changed my perception of the products," Liao tells The New Yorker, "it only made one thing clearer: many of the products in this world actually have nothing to do with the workers who made them. To most of the workers there, Apple was just a name, a logo."