In Gloss, an interdisciplinary installation comprising of music, sculpture, photomedia and performance, Rainbow Chan offers a unique perspective on counterfeits and creativity in post-socialist China.

The artist draws inspiration from images of fake designer goods in fashion photography, on social media and in advertising, as well as low quality bootlegs of pop music, highlighting the inherent creativity and resistance within these practices of ‘misuse’ and mistranslation.

Chan proposes knockoff goods as a metaphor for the impacts of Westernisation on modern China, revealing how the counterfeit product poses a key threat to the West’s ideas of authorship and profit, and challenging the way power is constructed and propagated.

This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.