M+, Hong Kong’s new museum of 20th and 21st century visual culture, opened to the public in November 2021. The museum’s collections include visual art, design, architecture, and moving image from Hong Kong, Mainland China, elsewhere in Asia and beyond. AAA-A and our friends at the China Institute presented a special virtual walkthrough and live Q&A with M+ curators Pi Li, Sigg Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs, and Yokoyama Ikko, lead curator of design and architecture.
Following a brief introduction, the curators guided the audience through their opening exhibitions: M+ Sigg Collection: From Revolution to Globalisation, a survey of contemporary Chinese art from the early 1970s to the present, and Things, Spaces, Interactions, an assemblage of more than five hundred design objects that have had a profound influence in Asia and across the globe over the last seventy years.
Pi Li is the Sigg Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs, M+, a visual culture museum in Hong Kong. He previously served as the deputy executive director of the art administration department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA, 2001-2012); the co-founder and director of Boers-Li Gallery (2005-2012) in Beijing, former Universal Studios-Beijing in Beijing. Exhibitions Pi Li curated include Right is Wrong: Four Decades of Chinese Art in M+ Sigg Collection at Whitworth Gallery in Manchester and Bildmuseet in Umea 2015 and 2014; Under Construction at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in 2002; Moist: Asia-Pacific Media Art at the Beijing Millennium Monument Art Museum in 2002; Fantasy Zone at Art Museum of DongA Daily in 2001 and Beijing Modern Art Center in 2002; Image is Power at He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen in 2002. He was the curator of Media City Seoul in 2006. He has also served as curator for the Shanghai Biennial in 2002; and Allôrs la Chine at Centre Georges Pompidou in 2003. Publications include From Action to Concept (2015), Farewell to Moralism (2018) and, most recently, M+ Sigg Collection: Chinese Art after the 1970s (2021). Pi Li is the Chinese Fellow of Aspen Institute and he earned his PhD degree in art history from the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Yokoyama Ikko is lead curator of design and architecture at M+, Hong Kong’s new museum for visual culture at West Kowloon Cultural District. Before joining M+, she was based in Stockholm and served as head of exhibitions at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design. As an independent curator and writer, Yokoyama worked on international exhibitions and projects, and in 2008, she cofounded Editions in Craft, a production platform that encourages collaborations among artists, designers, and craftspeople and worked on the projects mainly in South Africa and Sweden. Currently, she serves as an executive committee member of the ICAM International Confederation of Architectural Museums, steering committee member of Le Think Tank 2059 by VIA Promotion of Innovation in Furniture Design in France, advisory panel of CHAT Centre for Heritage Arts & Textiles in Hong Kong and expert member of the Council for Cultural Affairs in the Agency of Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan.
This virtual program is co-presented with China Institute.