The Changsha Kiln was the largest exportation of porcelain during the Tang Dynasty (618–907). It pioneered the underglaze red, blue and five-colour techniques, bringing the world into the age of coloured porcelain. It was a rare representation of community-owned business and autonomous design under imperial rule, embodying the diverse and liberal grassroots collective wisdom, aesthetics and culture of the time. Its dominating market share and extremely rapid rise in just a century made it an influential medium for the dissemination and fusion of culture and art between Asians and Africans, and also gave birth to advertising, marketing and other modern strategic branding approaches.

Today, the stories of Changsha kiln are unsung in its homeland, and the legacy of traditional culture was left in limbo only in museums. With much of China's non-royal traditional culture and knowledge merely residing in museum collections and a handful of state-approved cultural heirs, detachment, decontextualization and dogmatism have greatly hindered its engagement with future generations. To break through this dilemma, I tried to find a way to free it out of the museums and back to its plebeian contextualisation. By curating a contemporary "archaeological excavation" exhibition in a shopping mall, telling the story with well-known identities of modern brands to engage young people and emancipate the confines of traditional dogmas.

I selected some of the most representative techniques and decorative designs of Changsha Kiln to design and imitate display artefacts in a modern context. Exhibition interpretations use fiction to tell stories of how these objects were interpreted when they were unearthed a thousand years later. It allows the viewer to actively take on a future perspective on the relationship between modernity and tradition.