The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg

Uli Sigg, a well-known Swiss art entrepreneur and an ex-ambassador to China, Mongolia and North Korea, has had major influence on Chinese economic policy over the last forty years. Since the years of his diplomatic activity, he has understood the extraordinary novelty of the new generation of Chinese artists of the 1990s. Serving as a mediator for Ai Weiwei, Zeng Fanzhi and Cao Fei, he becomes one of the first and most influential Western collectors, convinced that “creativity is a country’s only inexhaustible resource.” Michael Schindhelm’s film (Lo schermo dell’arte presented his documentary Bird’s Nest, about Herzog & de Meuron’s Olympic Stadium in Beijing, in 2008), provides interesting insight into contemporary China. The camera takes us on a visit to the ateliers of artists (including Ai Weiwei, Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun), records the lively karaoke bar scene, and moves on to the site of the new project for M +, a museum designed by Herzog & de Meuron, which will open in 2019 in Hong Kong, to which Sigg has sold most of the contemporary Chinese art works in his collection.