Sigg Prize 2019
Formerly known as the Chinese Contemporary Art Award, the new Sigg Prize aims to champion and support artists working in the Greater China region, including mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. L’Officiel Art met its founder, businessman and collector Uli Sigg.
L’OFFICIEL ART: From the Chinese Contemporary Art Award, founded in 1997, to the Sigg Prize, whose first edition is held this year: what has changed and what is the reason for this transition?
ULI SIGG: I legally founded the CCAA in 1997, but I actually launched the first award in 1998. After twenty years, I wanted to find a new future for it. When I set it up, there was no such thing in China yet – an award to foster and encourage contemporary Chinese art creation. At the time, I was considering putting it up myself and then passing it on to Chinese hands at some point, to a Chinese institution that would then develop it further. But no one dared to step forward for a long time. The situation changed in the last couple of years, in particular when the M+ museum, recognizing its potential, took a strong interest in taking it over. And so Anna Liu as CCAA Chair and myself as its founder, and now the M+ leadership, took the decision for an award run from this strong base in Hong Kong, open to artists from the entire Greater China region. And this award would have a new name, the Sigg Prize.
The winner of the Sigg Prize will receive a very sizeable financial award, about $63,900. What is the main objective of this new biennial prize?
The purpose is the same as that of the original CCAA – to foster debate about what is meaningful art in Hong Kong and Greater China and to make the world more aware of Chinese artistic talents. We have the same purpose, but now with many more resources and greater professionalism provided by M+. In particular, there will now be an exhibition guaranteed for the finalist artists and to select the winner, organized by M+. Also, since M+ is based in Hong Kong, the artists will not be running the risk of limitations one may find in Mainland China when exhibiting their work.
Next year the museum will also launch the Sigg Critic Prize.
Can you tell us more about it?
In 2007, I established the Art Critic Award in order to encourage independent art criticism in China. At the time, much of Chinese “art criticism” was limited to texts published in auction catalogues or publications produced by galleries for promotion of their artists. The current Sigg Critic Prize has evolved from this. The Sigg Prize and the Sigg Critic Prize will happen in alternate years, so the first edition of the critic award will take place in 2020. It is still a work in progress, and we may shape it differently.
The Prize originates from your passion and interest in Chinese contemporary art, which began in 1979, when you moved to China for business. In the early 1990s you started collecting it. What brought you to systematically collect works by Chinese artists?
It was in the 1990s that I decided to start collecting Chinese contemporary art in a rigorous, systematic way, as I imagined a national institution would but did not. The reason was very simple: no one at the time was doing this in China – no individual or institution. I remember that the first work by a Chinese contemporary artist I ever acquired was a painting by a woman who later stopped working and disappeared from the art scene. But that is the risk inherent in collecting contemporary art.
Is there any work by a Chinese artist that holds a special place in your collection?
It’s not easy to answer this question. It would be like you having to tell me who is your favorite child, provided you have some!
“Sigg Prize 2019: Finalist Artists Exhibition.” M+, Hong Kong. December 2019.