Worlds Beyond Worlds: Art Making and Curating in the Sigg Prize 2025

Award exhibitions are group shows without a theme, curated displays that emphasise both heterogeneity and unity, as well as diverse artistic practices that speak to the here and now. They occupy a unique place within contemporary art exhibition making, and are perhaps the only genre in which artists are in vague competition with one another. Creating such an exhibition poses unique curatorial challenges, especially when working with various artistic approaches. For the Sigg Prize, an international jury^[1] selects the shortlisted artists, allowing us to focus on curating a compelling exhibition and guiding artists in their newly commissioned works. Our aim is for each artist’s contribution to be appreciated independently, to celebrate their individuality and distinct artistic languages, and to highlight the underlying themes connecting their works. In this spirit, the Sigg Prize, now in its third edition, recognises and supports artists who have made notable strides in their careers over recent years. It also serves as a vital platform for M+ to engage with the latest art practices in the Greater China region and its diasporas.

All born in the 1980s and 1990s, the six shortlisted artists in this edition constitute the youngest group in the award’s history. While they are geographically dispersed, they share common histories, languages, cultural traditions, and artistic motivations. These overlaps can be found in works that reference ancient literary sources and archaeological sites. At the same time, their critical reflection on technology takes form in motorised robots encased in ceramic exteriors, animations inspired by textile weaving, AI-driven image generation, and mixed reality techniques that challenge our perception. In addition to their interests in technology and media, some artists remain committed to exploring psychological states, whether by examining the interplay between bodily awareness and architectural space, or by reflecting on internal narratives shaped by desire.

Heidi Lau and Bi Rongrong adopt a predominantly object-based and handcrafted approach to artmaking that involves labour-intensive processes. Both artists draw inspiration from classical sources rooted in Chinese culture that span centuries. In Pavilion Procession, Heidi Lau taps into her longstanding interest in the ancient Chinese mythological text Shanhaijing and creates a large-scale installation of fragile ceramic objects in dialogue with one another: pieces shaped like the full moon, sculptures reminiscent of funerary objects or landscapes, and a robotic spider programmed to move with a limp. With rugged surfaces in mottled pink, green, and blue tones, the objects evoke the decaying architecture of Lau’s hometown, Macau. Blurry human faces and limbs emerge across their forms, symbolising rebirth and prompting reflections on mythology, hybridity, death, and the afterlife. Bi Rongrong’s To Cut, To Connect, To Draw also looks at themes of landscape and tradition. This monumental textile work presents geometric patterns borrowed and adapted from traditional cultures in Asia, Africa, and Europe, while also reflecting her own understanding of drawing, weaving, and space. The multilayered construction includes embroidery, collages, paintings, and other mediums. Together, they represent the artist’s concept of weaving as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of our time, inviting viewers to consider how the proliferation of ties binds our modern world.

Departing from material-based explorations, Hsu Chia-Wei and Ho Rui An turn to history and archival materials to investigate how technology shapes the construction of historical narratives and the power dynamics that underpin them. Hsu Chia-Wei’s video installation The Sound of Sinking explores shipwrecks from the First Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War in the Taiwan Strait, using experimental music, virtual reality, and archaeoacoustics^[2] to create an immersive underwater soundscape. Layers of sound and image offer a new way of experiencing history, subtly revealing how perception is formed and how historical narratives are constructed. Continuing the exploration of history and technology, Ho Rui An shifts the focus to interrogate the production and circulation of images in the digital age, as well as the impact of power structures on the development of artificial intelligence across the region. The installation Figures of History and the Grounds of Intelligence and the text-based piece A History of Intelligence in ((South)(East)) Asia complement each other. By contrasting traditional, lecture-based models of knowledge production with emerging, AI-driven methods of information dissemination, Ho maps major international events in the region from the 1940s to 2025, tracing deep connections between national infrastructures, platforms, and ideological frameworks.

On the other hand, Pan Daijing and Wong Ping turn inward, letting intuition and affect guide their creative explorations. Pan Daijing’s site-specific installation Bent fully engages with its architectural surroundings, using the window and corner of the gallery space to evoke emotional connections through images, sound, and materials. A swimming pool ladder cleverly reinforces the sunken gallery space below. Irregular sculptures are juxtaposed with dancers’ shadowy bodies in black-and-white video footage, disrupting the rigid geometries of the gallery. Building on this visual tension, rapid, rhythmic sounds intensify the audience’s sensory experience, directing them to focus on their physical awareness. While Pan’s work explores the internal experience of how the body relates to its physical surroundings, Wong Ping’s Debts in the Wind uses a stream-of-consciousness narrative style to portray the complexities of everyday encounters. A chorus of monologues from his characters delivers a sharp critique of desire, social hierarchy, and absence. Set on a golf course, this new story is metaphorical in nature, yet the non-linear narration gradually uncovers the intricate relationships between the characters. Rather than offering conclusions or judgement, the work shrouds its darkness in playfulness and offsets despair with humour, offering audiences a contemplative space for rumination.

Many of the works featured in the Sigg Prize 2025 exhibition are newly commissioned. From developing ideas to exhibiting their art, our close collaboration with the six shortlisted artists has fostered a shared space for dialogue. This exhibition is not only a display of art but also a site for experimentation, knowledge production, and imagining the impossible—built on mutual trust between curators and artists. Each artist in this edition expresses their own perspective and artistic language through a wide range of mediums and approaches that cannot be easily categorised. However, having these diverse works converge in the same place prompts critical reflection on how we might better understand the progression of contemporary art in the region in a more nuanced and connected way, broadening our perspectives and thinking on the complexities of our world.