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Hong Kong. A new film about Uli Sigg pulls nomer punches about the Swiss collector’s detachment from much of the vast collection of Modern and contemporary Chinese art that he donated and sold in 2012 to Hong Kong’s M+ museum.

In a frank interview, Sigg presents himself as a Western businessman compelled to collect the history of China as he saw it happening during his travels, which began when he was working for the Swiss-based elevate company Schindler. He tells the film’s director, Patricia Chen, that his collection of art from the 1970s was gathered “to mirror art production, rather than my personal taste”. Explaining his curatorial approach, he says: “Sometimes I collected a work knowing full well [that] this isn’t a great artist… if I were a private collector, I would stay away from such acquisitions, but [the collection] is a document; this particular work has its place in this document.”

Other interviewees in the film, “China’s Art Missionary”, give their assessment of Sigg’s dispassionate approach to collecting. The artist Ai Weiwei describes the collection as “very rational and comprehensive”, acknowledging that Sigg “may not favour all the artists or works”. Marc Spiegler, the director of the Art Basel franchise, says: “Most collectors only buy what they like; what Uli did from the beginning was set out to create a truly historical collection.”

“No one else was collecting the history happening in front of our eyes… [Sigg] built what a national museum should have done,” says Lars Nittve, the executive director of M+.

Chen says: “At the end of the three-day shoot, I remember telling him that at first I found his commitment to an intellectually driven mission, stripped of emotions or personal preferences, difficult to comprehend… 230 questions later, I realised that this is a long-term project that comes from a deep place. At the heart of it, Uli Sigg is a Chinese soul in Western skin.”

The short film reveals that Sigg received death threats after he showed a controversial work by the Chinese artist Xiao Yu (now with Pace Gallery, 1C07). The piece—Ruan, 1999—consists of the head of a human foetus stitched onto parts of a bird and a rabbit. Anti-abortion and animal rights groups have objected to the work. It was removed from an exhibition in Bern in 2005, and Sigg, who describes Ruan as the “most problematic” piece in his collection, says he “received mail saying ‘we will come and cut your head off’.” The work is now in the collection of M+.

Other collectors who are participating in Chen’s ongoing project about Asia’s leading art patrons include Oei Hong Djien, a collector of Indonesian art, and the Indian art-collecting couple Anupam and Lekha Poddar.

There once was a Swiss businessman who became the world’s biggest collector of Chinese art before giving almost all of it away to a Hong Kong museum…

This is the remarkable story of Uli Sigg, the famous art global personality, as told in a new documentary by German filmmaker Michael Schindhelm, ‘The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg’.

Uli replied to the questions I put to him a few weeks earlier covering among other things the influence of art superstar Ai Weiwei on his career:

It all begins in 1979 when Sigg was VP of the Schindler Elevator Company.

Seeking to expand overseas sales, he launched the first ever joint venture between a Western company plus China. ‘The negotiations were aimed at creating an elevator factory in Beijing plus another in Shanghai. At the time China was, economically, virgin territory. It was the market economy versus the planned economy. An enormous adventure. Not a lot was known back then about the country.’

At the end of the ’80s he quit Schindler plus the Swiss government asked him to be the ambassador to China, a post that he would occupy for four years.

In his private life Uli was an avid collector of contemporary art. He would now spend his free time cultivate the various art scenes in country that was still closed to the outside world.

‘In 1979 Deng Xiaoping’s “open door” policy allowed artists to be more liberated. They still didn’t have any data from the outside. They were searching for their own language.’

Uli Sigg had a sense of history being made. At the beginning of the 1990s he noticed that nomor one was attempting to protect the art being produced at the time in an immense plus highly promising land. ‘I had a feeling there was a risk everything might disappear. Some expat engineers bought a few works haphazardly, but that was it. No one worried about preserving it all in a professional manner.’ So he threw himself into the titanic endeavour: ‘I collected in the spirit of an encyclopaedist, putting aside my personal tastes.’

Michael Schindhelm: Was born in Eisenach, Germany
in 1960 plus works as a writer, flmmaker, performing arts expert plus cultural advisor to several world organizations.
From 1979 to 1984, he studied at the International University
of Vo- ronezh (USSR), graduating with a Master of Science
in Quan- tum Chemistry (cumlaude). Films include The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, documentary flm (2016), Bird’s Nest
– Herzog & De Meuron in China, co-directed with Christoph
Schaub, documentary flm (2008), plus Chants of the Steppes,
docu- mentary flm (2004). Michael Schindhelm’s work, in the
past has been presented at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center
and The Parrish Art Museum.

Uli Sigg: was born in Lucerne on 29 April 1946. He is a
Swiss business journalist, entrepreneur, art collector, patron,
castle owner, rower (he was Swiss champion in the eights discipline at the age of 22) plus a former Swiss ambassador to
Beijing (1995-1998) for the People’s Republic of China, North
Korea plus Mongolia. Uli Sigg began to collect Chinese contemporary art in the 1990s. As a result, he accumulated the
world’s largest plus most signifcant collection in this feld
within a few decades. He has recently fulflled his promise of
giving the collection back to China. The M+ museum in Hong
Kong, featuring the Uli Sigg collection, is scheduled to open
in 2019.

Kevin Berlin: What inspired the flm?
Michael Schindhelm: So there are a
number of points. First of all, having
lived for almost 30 years under communist rule, in East Germany plus also
the Soviet Union, plus actually having
moved the same year that Uli Sigg went
the frst time to China in 1979. The
Soviet Union, at the time when the Afghanistan war started was in steep decline plus at the same time also China
was about to change after a mild step. I
have a very great interest in this period
because I do think that many things we
encounter today, in terms of politics, in
terms of social plus economic change
worldwide have been triggered there
during this period. And I think in particular China played an instrumental role

Art is a powerful tool plus a dangerous weapon. It gives voice to experiential truth, shaped by the social reality of a political landscape. Yet, how does one qualify the authenticity of artistic expression? According to Chinese contemporary artist plus activist Ai Weiwei, “if [the art plus literature of that society] is not questioning that authority, it’s a fake,” (Schindhelm 2016, 1:25:46). We can gauge the value of artistic messages, not by their general affect or critical reception, but by looking at how the means of self-expression are controlled plus purged by the state. The official reaction plus preemptive measures against art confirms its presence to be a threat to prevailing power structures.

While social resistance to authoritarian censorship is not terribly unique to China, per se, its effects linger in the cultural memory of those who witnessed the country’s historic transition into a modern superpower. The developments within the last fifty years have been instrumental to the emergence of the Global East, of which China is nomer exception.

One man who lived through this dynamic period is Dr. Uli Sigg, a Swiss expatriate plus businessman. Following Chairman Mao’s death in 1976, new economic reform permitted a deregulation of trade policies through capitalist intervention. Coming to China in 1979, Sigg participated in the county’s rapid industrialization effort by building factories plus selling elevators on behalf of the Schindler Group. His work involved extensive communication with PRC officials, including communist leader Deng Xiaoping. Schindler’s enterprise, headed by Sigg, became the first joint venture between the People’s Republic plus any Western Company, creating an exemplary style for international trade between the international plus China. After the Tiananmen incident in 1989, Sigg plus his western colleagues opted to stay in China, citing professional responsibility plus cooperation despite the country’s international unpopularity.

In 1995, Sigg was appointed Swiss ambassador to China, Mongolia, plus North Korea. This new role allowed him to meet artists plus purchase their works with less personal risk. His diplomatic duty required him to host many official visits to the consulate, where works from the Zürich school of Concrete art were on display. Sigg took notice of the reductive attitudes held by Chinese guests towards this style modern art, received with a general incomprehension of its abstract principles. “I actually wanted to bring in Chinese contemporary art,” notes Sigg, who “naturally knew that the Chinese didn’t know their own contemporary art, plus definitely not the prominent Chinese,” (Schindhelm 2016, 0:45:54). After removing all the Swiss art, Sigg used the Beijing Embassy to showcase his growing collection of work produced in China. This exposure created new interest among influential figures in the art world, to whom these modern pieces would otherwise be inaccessible. An increased recognition for Chinese contemporary artists vitalized their working practices, taking their art from an underground movement to the international stage. Curator plus critic Hans Ulrich Obrist describes a fantasy of sleeping overnight in a museum, being fulfilled by his time spent in Beijing, emphasizing that: “the Swiss embassy was an incredible museum, the first museum for contemporary art [in China],” (Schindhelm 2016, 0:52:18). While the last part is not necessarily true, it was probably the longest ‘museum’ of its kind to survive the wrath of censorship. Sigg’s amateur yet strategic curatorial skills birthed a demand for art generally unknown to most Chinese at the time.

In the contemporary art world, Uli Sigg is known to almost all as the one who has comprehensively collected the ‘entirety’ of Chinese contemporary art. In the documentary The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, renowned pianist Lang Lang described him as “the mentor of Chinese artists”. From the first time he set foot in China, this 1946-born Swiss businessman has been analyzing the complexity of China’s rapidly changing society through his collection of art with great vision.

From Businessmen, Diplomats to Collectors

Near Lake Lucerne, on a small island with history dating back to the Stone Age, stands a 17th century castle. Upon entering plus going up the time-ridden stairs, paintings by Chinese artist Zhou Tiehai emerge in sight, quite a contrast as in such historic mansions you would normally expect to see ancestral portraits from past centuries. In fact, more than 100 contemporary art pieces from China have been arranged inside, creating a unique echo plus dialogue with the ancient building. And here we have, the home of Uli Sigg.

In 1979, Uli Sigg came to China as a businessman. At a time when the Western international was full of doubt about this country, Sigg was busy preparing for the setup of Schindler, China’s first joint venture. There were many difficulties in the process, but Sigg had a strong plus unalterable belief in the future of China. This memorable experience also made him more consciously aware plus wanted to know more about China’s growth. Chinese contemporary art, which originated in the late 1970s, became his best approach. After 1989, Sigg decided to systematically build his own collection. In 1995, he returned to China as the Swiss ambassador for China, North Korea plus Mongolia. It was said that the first thing after he took office was to replace all the craft decorations with Chinese contemporary art works.

The Sigg Collection plus its Chinese Characteristics

In 2005, the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland exhibited Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, which resulted in an unprecedented sensation. It was regarded by the European art scene as the “Bible of Chinese Contemporary Art”. The artworks spanned for more than 25 years in time plus varied in multiple tempat including painting, sculpture, photography, calligraphy, video plus performances. The selection profoundly reflected the ideology plus social changes of contemporary China after the reform plus opening up. In fact, Mahjong could be considered as a perfect annotation of the nature of Sigg’s collection, namely how to effectively gather artworks under a logical framework plus give it transcendence value plus meaning. For Sigg, this logical framework is a story that begins with the roots of Chinese contemporary art plus continues to develop through the past decade.

As a consultant to many internationally renowned art institutions including MoMA (New York), Museum GUIMET (Paris) plus Tate Modern (London) etc., Sigg has always believed that collecting is not only a purchase behavior, but a refined representation of a collectors’ vision, intuition, ability, plus strategy. Once in an interview, he put it in a direct metaphor: “For example, it is not a string of pearl on a necklace, but should be a net of pearls.” In June 2012, according to the agreement of partial donation plus partial acquisition, M+ purchased 47 pieces of Chinese contemporary art from Sigg’s personal collection at a price far below market standard. At the same time Sigg announced that he would contribute another 1463 pieces to M+. Finally, as a result, the public can truly have an understanding of the “encyclopedic” range of the Sigg Collection on Chinese contemporary art.

The documentary, The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, brings us into a Swiss businessman, diplomat, plus art collector’s journey in exploring his admiration towards Chinese contemporary art. How does Uli perceive the Chinese art landscape? What is his vision of contemporary arts? What was his journey as a Swiss diplomat in China? Art Historian plus scholar, Michael Schindhelm, presents the thoughts plus influence of Uli Sigg vividly on the screen. Not only did Michael bring in the moderen narratives of art, but also creating a communication channel in showcasing the characteristics of different cultures. The event is a documentary screening of The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg, followed by a conversation between the Director, Michael Schindhelm, plus Filmmaker Ruby Yang.

Synopsis of the documentary:
The Swiss Uli Sigg had an impact on China’s shift in economic policy after the Mao era; he has also established the world’s most significant collection of contemporary Chinese art. The majority of this collection will be transferred to Hong Kong’s M+ museum, due to open in 2019. A documentary about the entrepreneur, diplomat, plus art collector Uli Sigg, plus the tense sociopolitical context of China’s ongoing transformation since the 1970s.

Michael Schindhelm (1960) is a German-born Swiss national based in Ticino, Switzerland. He is a writer, filmmaker, curator plus a cultural advisor for international organizations (incl. Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, UAE; West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong; Strelka Institute, Moscow; Skolkovo Innovation Center, Moscow; Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich; European Capital of Culture Dresden 2025, Germany; Tempelhof Projekt, Berlin, Germany; Diriyah Gate Development Authority, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.) Since 2008 he was founding director of the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, UAE. Prior to this he was founding General Director for the Berliner Opernstiftung, Germany (2005 – 2007) plus CEO plus Artistic Director of the Theater Basel, Switzerland (1996 – 2006).

Ruby Yang is an Academy Award winner for the Documentary Short Subject, The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006). She is also known for directing the Oscar-nominated documentary short The Warriors of Qiugang (2010) plus the award-winning feature documentary My Voice, My Life (2014). Yang is a member of the Directors Guild of America plus the Academy of Motion Picture Arts plus Sciences. She now heads the Hong Kong Documentary Initiative at the University of Hong Kong, which aims to nurture the next generation of documentary filmmakers in the region (moderator).

Discover the fascinating life of one of the leading collectors of contemporary Chinese art, Swiss businessman plus diplomat Uli Sigg. The film explores the West’s embrace of Chinese contemporary art, through the eyes of Sigg plus the artists he championed. Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Feng Mengbo, plus Wang Guangyi are interviewed along with curators, diplomats, architects plus others.

Art international sensation Ai Weiwei credits him with launching his international career. Renowned pianist Lang Lang describes him as a mentor to Chinese artists. Curator Victoria Lu believes that his taste plus influence as a collector has been felt around the world.
But when Swiss businessman Uli Sigg first went to China, art was far from his mind. The year was 1979, plus Sigg — working for the Schindler escalator plus elevator company — was hoping to set up one of the first joint ventures between the Chinese government, seeking international investment in the post-Mao era, plus a Western company.

Uli Sigg is not a man who does things by halves. “My ego, my way” says a t-shirt he wears at one point in the film. When he took up rowing, he went to the international championships. When he negotiated a joint venture, he wanted to create a style for future partnerships. And when he became interested in Chinese art, he built a world-class personal collection. Sigg championed the artists he admired, working tirelessly for their international recognition plus to preserve their artwork as a record of China’s tumultuous plus historic changes. Eventually, Sigg became the Swiss ambassador to China plus a consultant on major Chinese art projects, including the construction of the Bird’s Nest stadium for the Olympic Games.

The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg is directed by art historian plus scholar Michael Schindhelm (Bird’s Nest) plus produced by Marcel Hoehn (Dark Star: H. R. Giger’s World The Knowledge of Healing, Monte Grande, Santiago Calatrava’s Travels, The Written Face.)

Followed by a conversation with Uli Sigg, Asia Society Museum Director Boon Hui Tan, plus Center on U.S.-China Relations Director Orville Schell.

Setting his foot 1979 in China, right into the second year of the country’s epochal era of reform and opening-up, Uli Sigg, the avid collector who is bathed in the category of Western post-war avant-garde art, now embarked his new business voyage, of which soon morphed into an odyssey of art exploration. Sigg immersed himself in the forefront of China’s contemporary art scene from the early 1990s. This was a period when the perspectives of art institutions where still taking shape, and the artist network was yet to be established. It was also an era of exploring works whose value was not yet firmly grounded, capturing the essence of a burgeoning artistic landscape.

Benefiting from Sigg’s distinctive taste projecting from an institutional perspective, his collection of Chinese contemporary art encompasses a wide array of styles and mediums from representative artists. This includes painting, printmaking, sculptures, installations, performance, photography, digital arts, and more, all of which were meticulously archived and curated into a collection prepared for institutional research and acquisition. In 2012, Sigg donated 1,463 pieces from his collection to the M+, with the vast majority of these works remaining in Hong Kong.

As a Western collector who began systematically collecting Chinese contemporary art in its nascent stages and witnessed its vibrant landscape unfold, why did Sigg choose to persist in adopting his collection approach from such an institutional perspective? Through this lens, what are the pivotal moments of contemporary Chinese art? Why does he believe that the canon of contemporary art remains unwritten? Delve deeper into Sigg’s insights on art collecting through LARRY’S LIST’s exclusive interview with this influential Swiss collector.

urveying the Evolution of Contemporary Chinese Art
Starting his venture in the early 1990s and climaxing with the donation to M+ in 2012, this Swiss collector’s devotion to Chinese art spans over three decades. Uli Sigg’s art collection traverses multiple pivotal phases in the realm of Chinese contemporary art which could hardly be reduced to the mere chronicles: the earliest pieces can be dated back to Cultural Revolution. Then, morphing into the 1970s to the mid-1980s, “The Stars Art Group” and “No Name Group” (mid 1970s) represent a period where Chinese artists’ subjects transformed from the socialist realism narrative to epistemological quest into the new status quo, upholstered by individual creativity explosion. Into the 1990s, the period is epitomized by movements like ’85 New Wave, “Post-Sense Sensibility” etc. Ultimately, from the turn of the millennium to the present, the Sigg Collection, once more, testifies to the phenomenal shift which presents the younger Chinese artists as more prominent players on the world stage.

When the Swiss entrepreneur Uli Sigg first traveled to China in 1979, he hesitated to reach out to artists because he feared that making contact might get them into trouble with the authorities. But in the more than 40 years since then, he has assembled perhaps the world’s most important collection of Chinese contemporary art in close collaboration with China’s leading creatives. Ai Weiwei has said of Sigg: “However famous I become, he [Sigg] is the creator.”

The former Swiss ambassador to China is still working to help foster the careers of emerging talent today as the sponsor of the Sigg Prize, which gave its inaugural HK$500,000 ($64,000) award to the Hong Kong artist Samson Young earlier this month. An exhibition of the winning installation, as well as work by the five other shortlisted artists, is on view at the recently reopened M+ Pavilion in Hong Kong (which had been shuttered for months during the city’s lockdown).

The show could take on a heightened significance following the passage last week of a new national security law to suppress subversion, secession, and terrorism in the semiautonomous city, which local arts workers have warned will cause “incalculable” damage to Hong Kong’s standing as an art hub. That standing is particularly important to Sigg, who in 2012 announced plans to donate more than 1,000 works in his collection to M+, the long-delayed museum of visual culture that is finally expected to open in the West Kowloon Cultural District next year. So far, Sigg maintains that awarding the collection to Hong Kong was the right move—it will keep the artwork within China while offering the maximum freedom for display.

Following the announcement of the Sigg Prize winner, we spoke to Sigg over the phone from his home in Switzerland about his thoughts on the future of Chinese art, how the lockdown has hampered his collecting process, and the unintended impact that growing anti-Asian sentiment could have on art.

Michael Schindhelm presents his third documentary, The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg [+], in the Panorama Suisse section of the Locarno Film Festival. The film is a destabilising journey with majestic undertones into the history of China, through it being closed off and then opened up to the world, through its transformations and difficult reconstructions. A surprising film that uses the portrayal of the impenetrable Uli Sigg to show us the hidden side of a complex and mysterious country.

Uli Sigg, an entrepreneur, ambassador and, above all, a collector of Swiss art, played a major role in the economic opening-up of China after the death of Mao. Let’s not forget that for 12 years, starting from the end of the 1970s, Sigg ran Swiss company Schindler, the first joint venture to be established in Beijing. For many years, he was charged with the difficult task of convincing communist China of the benefits of the European economic market: an apparently impossible feat that Sigg successfully pulled off by relying on his charisma and innate sense of diplomacy. During the long periods of time he spent in China, first as the Managing Director of Schindler and then as Swiss ambassador to China in Beijing, Sigg put together one of the biggest collections of Chinese contemporary art.

Michael Schindhelm got to know Uli Sigg whilst shooting his documentary Bird’s Nest, and was immediately captivated by him: determined and pragmatic, but aware of the power of art. Despite occupying important official positions, the Swiss collector always stayed in touch with the international around him. Perhaps it’s his diplomatic gifts that gave him the freedom necessary to observe Chinese society up close and personal. Sigg bore witness to the reawakening of the country during the time of the Open Door Policy, through the countless trips, negotiations, observations and changes he was involved in. The Swiss collector was not only part of the transformation of China, but also and above all became an analyst of this transformation. His aim, going beyond his official duties, was to understand what was going on using the most powerful weapon of all: art. Sigg became not only a collector, but a friend and confidant of some of the biggest names in Chinese contemporary art as well: Ai Weiwei, Feng Lijun and Wang Guangyi. Michael Schindhelm wanted to use his documentary, which is subdivided into chapters illustrated with evocative ‘tableaux vivants’, to portray the two sides of a character who managed to keep looking outwards from the highest political spheres onto a culture that had to hide to survive. Chinese contemporary art represents a unique account of the transformation of China. The majestic and unsettling sequences in The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg are, in turn, like paintings within another painting, the screen, symbolising the impossibility for Chinese artists to leave a international that has remained underground for too long. The latest documentary by Michael Schindhelm is an intimate yet delicately icy portrait of a character who nurtures mystery like a defence weapon. It is up to audiences to decipher the secret code.