Chinese bag design brand Clout Cloud is taking its storytelling off the product page and into public space. This month the label launched a new co-creation programme with creative teams. First to kick things off is a collaboration with visual collective Ciqi Zhuozhuo (磁炁灼灼): a film and photography project titled A Northern Kid Who Misses Home.
From 20 January to 28 February, the work is being shown as a public art exhibition inside Guangzhou Metro’s Feixiang Park Station, in partnership with Infinitus Plaza. Instead of a gallery opening or a brand pop-up, the setting is a commuter corridor – a place designed for passing through, not hanging around.
That choice is the point. Clout Cloud is betting that emotional connection can be built in the middle of daily routines, where audiences are not consumers first, but people on their way home.
The collaboration has three parts: humanistic photography, a public screening-style exhibition, and co-branded products. At the centre is the documentary-style visual work, co-created by Ciqi Zhuozhuo, Clout Cloud founder Wang Bo (王波) and his team. Over 2025, both parties returned multiple times to a city called Wuhai in Inner Mongolia to record scenes of daily life.
The project is trying to speak to the modern condition. Namely the experience of living in China’s big cities while feeling emotionally tethered to a smaller hometown – a tension recognisable in many of China’s young professionals.
For Clout Cloud, the metro exhibition doubles as brand positioning. It places the label closer to cultural production than seasonal trend-chasing and turns public art into a way of meeting audiences where they already are. In a crowded retail environment like that of a big Chinese city (Guangzhou has an estimated population of 15 million) the softer play is to offer up a feeling first, then let the product come later.
