If there is one thing he has always been looking for in his life, says Uli Sigg once these days, it is intensity. Seen from this perspective, the last few months have meant well to him: What a roller coaster ride this year. Political storms have brought him in Hong Kong: Once a Beijing-friendly propaganda sheet even called him a “foreign agent”, of all people, who was courted by official China as a friend of the Chinese people throughout his life.
Uli Sigg had been working towards this November 12th for many years, and then, in the spring of this year, everything suddenly seemed to be at stake. Tension down to the last second, literally until ten o’clock on Friday morning. Then the time had come: the M + opened its doors, the museum with which the financial metropolis Hong Kong, long vilified as a cultural desert, wanted to rise to world class here too: a new museum founded on par with Moma in New York, with the Center Pompidou in Paris the city wanted to give itself.
And right in the middle, as the basis and as the central certificate for the museum’s international reputation, is the collection of modern Chinese art by Uli Sigg. A collection that is unique in the world.
The lines are long, the website collapsed under the onslaught – but people in Hong Kong celebrate among themselves.
So now the doors are open, the queues are huge, the museum website collapsed after a few minutes under the onslaught. On this Friday, the day of all days, Uli Sigg takes a deep breath and says quietly: “It couldn’t look better. I really don’t know how.” Sigg is a Swiss of the more sober type, but now, at the end of a long day, he tells audibly moved from the middle of the museum about “euphoric, emotional” people: “Some cry,” he says. “They say: There’s never been anything like this in Hong Kong.”
Uli Sigg once also said that: “The first test has been passed”. Indeed. However, political circumstances suggest that this first test will be followed by other, more difficult ones. Today’s Hong Kong is no longer the city it once was.
Unfortunately, you cannot witness the onslaught yourself. Hong Kong’s corona rules require three weeks of quarantine after entry. The consequence: Hong Kong celebrates among themselves.
So you make a phone call and have photos sent. And indeed: In the middle of the room, one of the “Bloodline” families of the painter Zhang Xiaogang, eyeing one of the “Bloodline” families of the painter Zhang Xiaogang, looks cool and unemotional: Ai Weiwei’s work “Whitewash”: a group of Neolithic vases, some in white industrial paint by the artist dipped.
Patron, curator and godfather of an entire scene: Uli Sigg.
(Photo: Bartosz Kolonko / Bartosz Kolonko)
This is important because a work by Ai Weiwei triggered the storm in the spring: a photograph showing the finger at the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing. The excited Beijing friends in the city accused the works and artists of spreading “hatred against China”, and the Museum M + and Uli Sigg soon found themselves under general suspicion.
How much Hong Kong has become a different city in the meantime was shown by the fact that Prime Minister Carrie Lam in the spring by no means dismissed the attacks of partly cultural revolutionary furor as extremist absurdity, but hurried to assure that their authorities were now “on full alert” and one will ensure that the exhibitions do not “undermine national security”. That was a shock to the Hong Kong art scene and to the M + team. With the passing of the National Security Law in July of last year at the latest, freedom of expression and artistic freedom in Hong Kong were suddenly subjected to the arbitrariness of the Chinese Communist Party.
Sigg pioneered modern art in China in the nineties, he didn’t just collect masterpieces.
It must have been particularly painful for Uli Sigg. The former journalist, top-class entrepreneur and Beijing ambassador to his home country in Switzerland had done pioneering work for modern art, which was ignored by official China, especially in the 1990s: at the time he was a diplomat for three years, but by calling he was a patron, curator and godfather of a whole Scene. “There were years when I was the market,” says Uli Sigg. He consciously didn’t just collect masterpieces and not just what he liked: he proceeded encyclopedically. Sigg had put together the collection, “which a Chinese national museum should have put together,” Lars Nittve once told the SZ. The Swede Nittve built up the M + in Hong Kong as a founding director in the first few years. At that time he persuaded Uli Sigg to give his collection to Hong Kong.
So in 2012 Sigg donated the majority of his collection, almost 1,500 works, to the M +. “I want to give these works back to the Chinese,” he said. Back then, the choice of the city seemed like a stroke of genius. It was always clear: no museum in Beijing or Shanghai could ever have shown the collection, large parts would have disappeared in the poison cabinet. “Modern art is not your good friend, as the narrow definition of art in traditional and official China would like it to be,” says Uli Sigg. “She puts her finger in the wound.” But Hong Kong seemed the best of all worlds for Uli Sigg’s project: a part of China, yes, but a part of freedom of expression and artistic freedom, a cosmopolitan city visited by millions of Chinese. “Back then, Hong Kong was on the best possible course,” recalls Sigg. “And at the same time, the city was planning the best museum you can think of.” The M +.
The opening exhibitions are as planned – Ai Weiwei included.
You have sought a lot of talks with the officials in recent months, negotiated and argued with the branding of the city: In Hong Kong, which has been badly beaten by Beijing, there are still people who want their city to be perceived as an international metropolis. And so they were able to present the opening exhibitions exactly as planned. Including Ai Weiwei, who is present twice: In addition to the vase installation, an old Beijing video of him is shown.
Contrary to what some media reported, the Ai Weiwei stinky finger photos were never planned as part of the opening exhibition. This probably contributed to the temporary relaxation as well as the fact that Ai Weiwei, who was actually invited to the opening, canceled his attendance, as did all the other guests invited from abroad.
Ai Weiwei spoke through the media at the opening and complained that the museum was of course subject to censorship. In fact, Ai Weiwei’s stinky finger photo has long since disappeared from the museum’s website – only the M + logo welcomes you here today. Officially, the head of the “Kowloon Cultural District”, Henry Tang, noted that the series needed “further review”.
Henry Tang and Prime Minister Carrie Lam both spoke at the opening. They emphasized the city’s commitment to artistic freedom – and at the same time declared that this was of course subject to the National Security Act. Which sounds a bit like the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, which guarantees freedom of opinion, freedom of the press and freedom of demonstration in Article 35, while Article 1 makes it clear that everything is to be understood under the reservation of the “democratic dictatorship of the people”. Prospects are not good.
So on Friday a short moment of sigh of relief. But Uli Sigg also knows: The next test is sure to come. Has he ever regretted his gift? No, he says. “It is still important to me that the collection is in China.” It might be another ten, maybe twenty years or more before everything can be shown. “I may not see that again. But it’s not about me.”