Metal-free bra and non-underwired bra, 2013 collected on the occasion of the exhibition V&A in Shenzhen: Rapid Response Collecting, staged at the 5th Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, The Value Factory, Shenzhen.

The metal-free bra and a non-underwired bra are the type worn by women working in electronics factories in and around Shenzhen. One bra is made with plastic supports, the other has no wire support at all, meaning that they are not picked up by factory metal detectors at security checkpoints located at entry and exit points. The market for metal-free underwear has arisen because these garments allow female workers to avoid invasive (and possibly abusive) body searches from male security guards. Rates of abuse are high and access to help is limited. The choice of the type of bra worn is a consequence of the sexual politics of Shenzhen manufacturing.

Shenzhen, China’s first special Economic Zone is located at the tip of the Pearl River Delta. The city grew from a modest fishing town into a vast, sprawling metropolis of more than fifteen million in just thirty-five years, through manufacturing, trade and relentless commercial energy. Today Shenzhen is the world’s third busiest container port, with a population with an average age of the less than thirty and almost entirely composed of recent migrants.

The invitation to participate in the Bi-City Biennale enabled the museum to engage with this fast-changing city and to road test the recently introduced Rapid Response Collecting strand. The museum asked more than sixty people in Shenzhen to propose a design object that told a story about their city and the result was an exhibition of twenty-three things and twenty-three stories about the place. By exhibiting everyday objects, the show placed centre stage the realities of urban life, of industry and of commercial and social change.

Suggested by Ren Jue, an anthropologist and sexologist, Chen Yandi, founder of the Shenzhen City Shou Qian Shou Worker Center and Guo Jiawei, a graphic designer, the bras reflect the role that women’s bodies play in the economic development of Shenzhen.

The Shenzhen exhibition was the first opportunity to test Rapid Response Collecting. This new approach to collecting is intended to make museum collecting more responsive to global events, and to situate design in immediate relation to moments of political or social change. The museum opened a space dedicated to Rapid Response Collecting in July 2014.