Ruoru Mou received a grant to create new work. This project represents the first phase and an experimental foundation for ongoing research that she is conducting within the Chinese community in and around Florence. The research spans two sectors: the Chinese restaurants where her family is active and the Chinese-owned suppliers of leather bags for luxury brands, the dominant labor sector in the region. The sculptural and installation-based works that Mou is developing integrate infrastructural elements, waste, and byproducts from both industries to expose the complexities of migrant labor. By uncovering the stories behind the Made in Italy label, the works embrace the Eastern ideology of Shanzhai, transforming found objects and materials to reflect the production of counterfeit luxury goods.  Ruoru is a visual artist who lives and works between Amsterdam and Florence. Her practice focuses on sculpture and installation, exploring material culture in relation to transitional existence, industrial modernity within biographical and sociopolitical contexts, and the influence of Eastern sci-fi tropes in Western cinema. By drawing connections between personal, handcrafted, and industrially processed materials, her work questions the relationship to value, hierarchies of production, and material structures of power.