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.