Building A Canon Of Chinese Modern Art

The opening of M+ in Hong Kong next year will allow visitors to access for the first time the world’s most comprehensive Chinese contemporary art collection, thanks to the efforts of one man, Uli Sigg.

- Tan Chui Hua

When Hong Kong’s newest museum for visual culture, M+, opens next year, visitors will be able to access for the first time the world’s most comprehensive collection of Chinese contemporary art covering the 1970s to the present.

Besides its importance in documenting the development of China’s art scene, the collection is also a complex commentary through the eyes of artists on the country’s dramatic transformation since it opened its doors to foreign businesses in 1978, just two years after the Cultural Revolution.

Take Ai Weiwei’s Whitewash (1995-2000), one of the works in M+’s collection. Comprising 132 Neolithic vases, a quarter of which is covered in white industrial paint, the work is a poignant statement on the clash between Western technology and Chinese culture as China opened to the world.

Or Wang Xingwei’s New Beijing (2001), a satirical oil painting referencing the 1989 Tiananmen student protests. Injured emperor penguins, a species foreign to China, stood in for the students who were gunned down, an indictment of China’s censorship and disowning of memories.

China’s evolution from communist to capitalist society provides ample material for artists as well. Civilization Pillar (2003), by artist duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, is a clever take on China’s burgeoning capitalism and its excesses. A towering 4m pillar of solidified human fat weighing over one tonne, the pillar is an in-your-face criticism of the capitalist pathology of accumulating fat and disposing of it, slimming down for example, as society grows affluent.