‘No collection is complete’: Uli Sigg, the biggest collector of Chinese contemporary art, on his new M+ exhibition and next steps

Artists of this generation were creating after the end of the decade-long Cultural Revolution, the sociopolitical movement then Chinese leader Mao Zedong launched to remove bourgeois, capitalist influence. Intellectual and artistic expressions were suppressed; cultural artefacts were destroyed. In the first few years after the movement, “artists did not all fully trust that they could express everything. Then, from the 1990s to the early 2000s, the mood was much more open. The artists were more daring,” Sigg says.

This era also saw the effects of the Open Door Policy put in place by Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping 1978—this shifted China’s focus from class struggle to economic pragmatism and international trade. “Consumerism didn’t exist yet in the 1980s; it [wasn’t felt until] later in the 1990s and 2000s, when money became a big topic. All these dramatic changes became visible—and this exhibition is very much about those changes,” he says.

Examples include Beijing-born artist Zhao’s series of satirical posters, Zhao Bandi and the Panda (1999). It features pandas—China’s unofficial mascot, often seen as a symbol of soft power—in public health campaigns, but makes a statement about the artist’s unease over the lack of social care available in the commercialism-oriented 1990s. Sichuan-born artist Feng Zhengjie’s triptych Life Like Flower No 1 (2005-2007), meanwhile, depicts film icon Shu Qi seemingly in a trance, sandwiched between two other murals of a skull and a rose; the work reflects Feng’s revelation that the pleasures of stardom are fleeting.

Some artists turned their practice towards commenting on the global art market. In the black-and-white silent film Will/We Must (1997), Shanghai-born artist Zhou Tiehai created nine fictional sequences which serve as metaphors for the unfair treatment and lack of exposure Chinese artists experienced at international exhibitions. Others look internally: Chinese artist collective the Yangjiang Group, made up of Zheng Guogu, Chen Zaiyan and Sun Qinglin, subverted the high-culture status of traditional calligraphy by weaving quotidian elements into their calligraphic practices. In Calligraphy Peach Blossom Garden (2004), they use massage machines and closed-circuit TV—together with scrunched-up ink art paintings—to create a calligraphy installation that visitors can walk into.

In case you missed it: Hong Kong ink artist Raymond Fung’s retrospective explores unconventional materials and modern themes

“[The M+ team and I] felt we would give space to different emotions: wonder, sadness and curiosity. That’s how we structured the curation. We selected artworks to illustrate those types of emotions,” he says.

Sigg started buying Chinese art for himself in the mid-90s, while he was based in the region. “When I started buying, I noticed that no one was collecting contemporary Chinese art. Maybe there were a few people who did in a very random way. But someone should bring it together,” he says. “So I tasked myself to do what the national museum should have done but didn’t.”

At first, he would collect art based on his personal preferences, but he gradually moved on to selecting pieces that he feels address or document important social issues and sentiments. He would go on to amass about 2,500 Chinese works—and about 100 North and South Korean pieces—the bulk of which were donated to M+.

In 2005, he put on his first exhibition, Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, at the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland. “It drew an audience, the biggest the museum had ever had at that time for a contemporary exhibition of any kind,” he says. “There was a lot of interest [in contemporary Chinese art] all of a sudden, because people had absolutely no knowledge of it.” He says there was very little information on China at the time, except from books written by people who had never been to China. “So [my collection] has been of importance to shape the outside view of Chinese contemporary art.”

What is perhaps more surprising is the impact his collection has on Chinese art fans, as many of the works have never been exhibited on the mainland. “So the Chinese wouldn’t know them, but I showed them outside [of their country]. The Chinese people actually learn about my collection here.” He has yet to stage an exhibition on the mainland, though, as he says he hasn’t been invited to do so; what’s more, the art he had there was shipped from China to Switzerland before it was donated to M+. That said, he muses, “It could be interesting [to do an exhibition there] right now.”

Ever since he began his self-imposed mission to build a contemporary Chinese art collection, he has thought of giving it to the nation. “I didn’t think I would own it,” he says. “The Chinese people should know their art. Of course, I could give it to the MoMA or Tate, who would love to have it. But then, they would give me a big exhibition, and then it would all be in the storage. We must understand that Chinese contemporary art is not their core business. When the Americans go to the MoMA, they go there to see Warhol’s Brillo Box and Jasper Jones’s Flag. The core business is in the Chinese space.” And this is how so many of Sigg’s pieces ended up in Hong Kong: initially, he was in conversations with museums in Beijing and Shanghai, but M+ approached and finally convinced him that it was the right place.

Read more: The Art of Collecting: Daphne King-Yao on carving space for contemporary Chinese art in Hong Kong

One might imagine that his mission is complete after handing over the majority of his collection, but the 79-year-old continues to buy pieces that intrigue him—most recently turning his attention also to digital and NFT art. After all, he says, “My collection is comprehensive but not complete. There are important things that I have missed over time.

“No collection is complete.”

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