Uli Sigg, Collector of Chinese Contemporary Art
Johnson Chang, Founder and Director of Hanart TZ Gallery

Moderator: Pi Li, Head of Art, Tai Kwun Contemporary

How do you create a narrative of Chinese contemporary art history through the practice of private collecting? Collectors share their approaches to developing landmark collections of Chinese contemporary art, reflecting on how their role has developed, how the collecting landscape has evolved, and what they have learned in the process.

Uli Sigg has traversed diverse fields in his career including journalism, diplomacy (as Swiss ambassador to China, North Korea, and Mongolia), venture capital investing, and art. Of his extensive interactions with China over 40 years, two are of historic significance: establishing the first industrial joint venture between the People's Republic of China and the outside world in 1980, and forming a singular collection of Chinese contemporary art. Spanning the 1970s to the present day, the collection ultimately restituted 1,500 works through Hong Kong’s M+ museum. In 1997, Sigg established the Chinese Contemporary Art Award, now transformed into the Sigg Prize. He is a member of the M+ Board, the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the International Advisory Council of the Tate, London.

Johnson Chang (Chang Tsong-Zung) has been active in curating exhibitions on Chinese art since the 1980s. Current active curatorial projects include: 'Jia Li Hall’, a series of research on Confucian rites and aesthetics; ‘West Heavens’, Sino Indian exchange in art and social thought; 'Yaji Garden’ (together with the Yellow Box Projects), which investigates Chinese aesthetic space and its culture of connoisseurship.

Pi Li is the Head of Art of Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong. He was formerly Sigg senior curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs of M+ Hong Kong. He previously served as the deputy executive director of the art administration department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA, 2001–12), and was the co-founder and director of Universal Studios-Beijing (2005–12), later Boers-Li Gallery in Beijing. Pi Li earned his Ph.D. degree in art history from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. 

The Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 Conversations program is curated by Stephanie Bailey.