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Pioneering Visions

Artists, ideas, and perspectives shaping the stories of tomorrow

Sarah Sze. Centrifuge, 2017. Mirrors, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, archival pigment prints, ceramic, acrylic paint, salt, suitcase, lights, fans, video projectors, and speaker system. M+, Hong Kong. Commissioned by Haus der Kunst, ‘Der Öffentlichkeit—von den Freunden Haus der Kunst’, 2017. © Sarah Sze. Image courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro

Installation view of Heidi Lau’s Pavilion Procession (2025) at Sigg Prize 2025. Commissioned by M+, 2025. Photo: Dan Leung, M+, Hong Kong

Kimsooja. To Breathe, 2025. Installation view of Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now, 2025. © Kimsooja. Photo: Lok Cheng, M+, Hong Kong

Sarah Sze. Centrifuge, 2017. Mirrors, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, archival pigment prints, ceramic, acrylic paint, salt, suitcase, lights, fans, video projectors, and speaker system. M+, Hong Kong. Commissioned by Haus der Kunst, ‘Der Öffentlichkeit—von den Freunden Haus der Kunst’, 2017. © Sarah Sze. Image courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro

Installation view of Heidi Lau’s Pavilion Procession (2025) at Sigg Prize 2025. Commissioned by M+, 2025. Photo: Dan Leung, M+, Hong Kong

Kimsooja. To Breathe, 2025. Installation view of Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now, 2025. © Kimsooja. Photo: Lok Cheng, M+, Hong Kong

Sarah Sze. Centrifuge, 2017. Mirrors, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, archival pigment prints, ceramic, acrylic paint, salt, suitcase, lights, fans, video projectors, and speaker system. M+, Hong Kong. Commissioned by Haus der Kunst, ‘Der Öffentlichkeit—von den Freunden Haus der Kunst’, 2017. © Sarah Sze. Image courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro

Installation view of Heidi Lau’s Pavilion Procession (2025) at Sigg Prize 2025. Commissioned by M+, 2025. Photo: Dan Leung, M+, Hong Kong

Kimsooja. To Breathe, 2025. Installation view of Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now, 2025. © Kimsooja. Photo: Lok Cheng, M+, Hong Kong

Sarah Sze. Centrifuge, 2017. Mirrors, wood, bamboo, stainless steel, archival pigment prints, ceramic, acrylic paint, salt, suitcase, lights, fans, video projectors, and speaker system. M+, Hong Kong. Commissioned by Haus der Kunst, ‘Der Öffentlichkeit—von den Freunden Haus der Kunst’, 2017. © Sarah Sze. Image courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro

Installation view of Heidi Lau’s Pavilion Procession (2025) at Sigg Prize 2025. Commissioned by M+, 2025. Photo: Dan Leung, M+, Hong Kong

Kimsooja. To Breathe, 2025. Installation view of Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now, 2025. © Kimsooja. Photo: Lok Cheng, M+, Hong Kong

About

Pioneering Visions is a new multifaceted series exploring the transformative practices of artists and makers shifting the trajectories of art and global visual culture. Presented in multiple formats and on different platforms, the series includes exhibitions, public events, and creative activation of the M+ Collections through in-gallery and online content.

Pioneering Visions is supported by CHANEL.

Dive Deeper

Shaping Tomorrow: Introducing the Pioneering Visions Initiative at M+

Shaping Tomorrow: Introducing the Pioneering Visions Initiative at M+

What are the artistic practices of the future? Introducing Pioneering Visions, a new initiative at M+ supported by CHANEL dedicated to visionaries who influence art and global visual culture.

Sigg Prize Winners Wong Ping and Heidi Lau: The World Is a Giant Question Mark

16 Dec 2025 / Ariadne Long

In this conversation, Sigg Prize 2025 winners Wong Ping and Heidi Lau speak with exhibition co-curator Ariadne Long about what drives their work and how they make sense of the real world through art.

A woman working on an art installation in a courtyard.

A woman working on an art installation in a courtyard.

Hu Xiaoyuan: Is Seeing Believing?

13 Mar 2020 / M+ Team, Neil Zhang

Artist Hu Xiaoyuan discusses how her work ‘Spheres of Doubt’ plays with notions of authenticity, as its organic materials change as time passes

Still from a digital video. A young woman in a ballet costume stands within a factory environment flanked by rows of machines. She looks down to the floor.

Still from a digital video. A young woman in a ballet costume stands within a factory environment flanked by rows of machines. She looks down to the floor.

Cao Fei: Constructing ‘Whose Utopia’

9 Nov 2017 / M+ Team

Multimedia artist Cao Fei reflects on her 2006 work, ‘Whose Utopia’, and its poignant portrayal of factory workers in China

A waist-up portrait of a woman wearing a dark baseball cap, taken outdoors as she gazes directly into the camera.

A waist-up portrait of a woman wearing a dark baseball cap, taken outdoors as she gazes directly into the camera.

Yu Ji: Materials in Motion

25 Sept 2023 / M+ Team

Yu Ji’s sculptures and installations evoke eerie disengagement, exploring complex relationships between people and things

Artist Heidi Lau, with short black hair, sits at a table in an art studio, focused on crafting an intricate ceramic sculpture. In the foreground, a brick-red clay piece is visible, while large windows in the background reveal a blurry city skyline.

Artist Heidi Lau, with short black hair, sits at a table in an art studio, focused on crafting an intricate ceramic sculpture. In the foreground, a brick-red clay piece is visible, while large windows in the background reveal a blurry city skyline.

Heidi Lau: Touch, Memory, and Clay

3 Dec 2025 / M+ Team

Artist Heidi Lau treats clay as a collaborator. Her Sigg Prize 2025 presentation blends handbuilt forms, world-building, and robotics.

A large number of chicken sculptures are scattered in an area with brick walls surrounded by a metal mounting structure composed of long bars at the 2003 Venice Biennale.

A large number of chicken sculptures are scattered in an area with brick walls surrounded by a metal mounting structure composed of long bars at the 2003 Venice Biennale.

Chickens in the Gallery!

2 Jul 2017 / Pi Li, Christel Pesme, Natalie Harding, Jo-Fan Huang

One curator and two conservators discuss the unique case of restoring and exhibiting 'Artistic Chicken' by Duan Jianyu for 'Canton Express'

Featured Artists

Sarah Sze

Sarah Sze

Kimsooja

Kimsooja

Duan Jianyu

Duan Jianyu

Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu

Kan Xuan

Kan Xuan

Hu Xiaoyuan

Hu Xiaoyuan

Liang Yuanwei

Liang Yuanwei

Cao Fei

Cao Fei

Yu Ji

Yu Ji

Heidi Lau

Heidi Lau

Image from top to bottom: Portrait of Sarah Sze. Photo: Deborah Feingold, courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro; Portrait of Kimsooja. Photo: Sebastian Schutyser, courtesy of Axel Vervoordt and Studio Kimsooja; Portrait of Duan Jianyu. Photo: Jiang Yanjian, courtesy of the artist; Julie Mehretu, 2012. Photo © Josefina Santos. Courtesy The New York Times; Portrait of Kan Xuan. Photo: Pauline J. Yao, courtesy of the artist; Portrait of Hu Xiaoyuan. Photo: Qiu Xiaofei, courtesy of the artist; Portrait of Liang Yuanwei. Photo: Guo Li, courtesy of the artist; Portrait of Cao Fei. Photo: Nan Jiang, courtesy of the artist; Portrait of Yu Ji. Photo: Yifeng Qin, courtesy of the artist; Portrait of Heidi Lau. Photo: Dan Leung © M+, Hong Kong

Get Inspired

Innovation is not novelty, but a transformation of perception—revealing unseen relationships and possibilities in history through non-making, non-doing, and deeper attention to what already exists.

—Kimsooja

Artistic innovation, for me, means finding your own way to read the past and future of the world, and understanding new and old technology. For me, innovation is always related to a bounceback of the past.

—Yu Ji

Abstraction creates a space that allows for contradiction, messiness, and the indeterminacy of queerness, of being fearless in exploring oneself, but also the indeterminacy of what can be creatively possible.

—Julie Mehretu

Artistic innovation means that despite existing in an increasingly mediated world, you keep pushing to create embodied and deeply felt works; you dedicate yourself to labour alongside your chosen medium and trust in your irrational and ineffable instincts.

—Heidi Lau

What shapes my artistic vision is often not a specific artwork or artist, but rather the slow, repetitive, and easily overlooked elements of everyday life. I am frequently drawn to objects and scenes that appear ordinary yet bear the traces of time.

—Kan Xuan

Artistic innovation is not about the pursuit of novelty; rather, it is about using movement, time, and materials to reveal the underlying structures of how the world changes and how events unfold.

—Liang Yuanwei

The pursuit of truth—and of what makes a painting meaningful—is the source of an ever-expanding horizon. Shifting from a focus on yourself alone to others fosters greater tolerance and broadens your perspective.

—Duan Jianyu

What is artistic innovation? It’s carving out a different path, one where you are fully part of today’s world in an existential territory filled with the remnants of the past.

—Hu Xiaoyuan

Creation, in a sense, has to be grounded in reality, even as it transcends it. You need to observe something true about real objects, the real world; only then can you transcend that reality with real grounding.

—Cao Fei

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