NARRATOR:
Can you imagine collecting a work when it is just a concept, long before it is completed? This is what Dr Uli Sigg did after he met the artists Peng Yu and Sun Yuan in the 2000s.
ULI SIGG:
We knew each other, in fact, quite well. And so they told me about works to be completed or accomplished, and I used to tell them about exhibitions I planned, and we would see how they matched—their idea, my idea. That's how the whole thing came about. And then they presented me this idea.
NARRATOR:
This is how Old People’s Home developed from a few drawings into these wax human sculptures, first exhibited in Switzerland and now at M+. Look at the faces—you may recognise military, political, and religious leaders, even philosophers.
ULI SIGG:
The idea was they should not look exactly like people who are either still alive or died, but just resemble, remind us of figures we may associate. But again, they are not them, but they should make us associate to these people and to these ideas who once were very powerful but maybe today are really outdated. But these old men with their old ideas still dominate the world. And it is as if they were brought into a kind of old people's asylum. They long lost the touch to (with) the real world.
The artists told me it's also a kind of a game. They play with these old people just as they play with us and with the world.
NARRATOR:
Conceptualised over 20 years ago, the work managed to stand the test of time, speaking to the world we are living in.