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Tate's Maria Balshaw on Gender Politics and AUS-UK Art Partnership This year marks the 3rd anniversary of a unique partnership between Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, London’s Tate, and Qantas. Announced in 2015, the five-year International Joint Acquisition Program for contemporary Australian art was launched as a platform to raise the international profile of contemporary Australian art.

Thanks to a $2.75 million corporate gift from the Qantas Foundation, the program will facilitate the acquisition of a range of major works by contemporary Australian artists over five years. The works will be owned and displayed by both the MCA and Tate. This round of acquisitions included works by Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Rosalie Gascoigne, Juan Davila, and Ian Burn.

At the announcement of the latest round of acquisitions, Nic Forrest sat down with Director of Tate, Maria Balshaw CBE, to ask her a few questions about the groundbreaking partnership and to quiz her on the controversial topic of gender politics in the art world. Hear what she had to say in the latest podcast from TheAList.Art

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Tracey Emin’s new public artwork for the City of Sydney proves the versatility and diversity of the renowned British artist’s practice. Although she is perhaps best known for her bolder and more daring works, such as her infamous “My Bed,” Emin is just as comfortable working at the more restrained and subtle end of the creative spectrum, as she shows with her City of Sydney public artwork commission, titled “The Distance of Your Heart,” as well as her latest series of small-scale paintings.

“The Distance of Your Heart” consists of 67 individually handcrafted bronze birds, each strategically placed in different locations throughout the city – atop poles, above doorways, on the pavement, and in many other positions. Poetic and restrained, the stunningly beautiful work of genius has the feeling of being the culmination of an artistic and personal journey as well as a distillation of the stylistic, technical, and aesthetic devices that characterize Emin’s work

Commenting on the work, Emin has said: “As my artwork I would like to make a counter site in Sydney for the young, the old, the backpackers, the tourists and the businessmen and women; somewhere else they can have their image taken to send back to the loved ones that they miss, that conveys the feelings of distance and homesickness.” The experience of Emin’s public artwork leaves no doubt at all the Emin achieved exactly what she wanted, and more.

Complementing the public artwork, Emin’s latest series of intimately sized paintings are a tour de force of draftsmanship. On show at the headquarters of LoveArt International (by appointment only) until May 22 alongside a variety of other works by Emin, the gestural and evocative renderings of sinuous nude figures explore the boundary between abstraction and figuration. Executed with an incredible immediacy and intensity, the expressive lines are imprints of both the corporeal and the sensual.

In this podcast, Tracey talks about her City of Sydney commission and her exhibition at LoveArt international. She also gives her opinion of Brexit as well as her views on the poignant issue of sexual abuse and the #MeToo movement.

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TheAList.Art Podcast - Nicholas Forrest gives his thoughts and opinions on the fantastic 2018 Biennale of Sydney -  SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement. 

Hint: It’s one of the best Biennales in recent years and is notable for being refined and cohesive, while at the same time featuring works that emphasise creativity, artistry, and craftsmanship

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Q&A: Art Collector Sindika Dokolo Talks Art, Africanness, and Cultural Empowerment

Sindika Dokolo is a man on a mission. The Congolese-born businessman, art collector, and philanthropist could be described as the initiator of an art-focused crusade to bring attention to his adopted home country of Angola in southwestern Africa, while at the same time create a discourse between the worlds of Western and African art (aesthetic, commercial, and institutional) and dispel the myth that an African art collector has to be a collector of African art. He is creating what he describes as an “African collection of art” rather than a “collection of African art.”

Sindika created the Sindika Dokolo African Collection of Contemporary Art in 2004 – a collection that now holds more than 5000 works from classical art to well-known and emerging contemporary artists from the continent as well as works by international artists such as Miquel Barceló, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Then in 2006 he established the Fundação Sindika Dokolo in Luanda, Angola with the aim of supporting “the development of African culture while exposing contemporary art in Africa to Angolans, the rest of the continent, and beyond.”

In the manifesto for the foundation Sindika states that “Africa is facing the greatest challenge in its long history – curbing underdevelopment – and there is one thing that deeply worries me: Africans seem to have lost their self-confidence.” There is no doubting that this is an immense problem to tackle, but Sindika has so far proven to be an unstoppable force. His pioneering and visionary use of art as a medium for initiating discourse and provoking action is  

In the interview below Nic Forrest talks to Sindika about his history of collecting art, the mission and role of the Fundação Sindika Dokolo, as well as the foundation’s 2017 partnership with documenta 14.

When did you first start collecting art and what inspired and motivated you to start collecting?

My father was collector of African classical art and was a major influence on me. I was probably around 10 years old when he gave me my first art work, a Chokwe ceremonial axe. He was Congolese and my mother is Danish so our house was a cultural mix of diverse backgrounds interwoven with multiple aesthetics. I grew up surrounded by eclectic objects from all over the world, from a painting by Degas to 18th century Kongo Kingdom Ntadi stone statues. They would both take me to museums and I recall visiting such institutions like the Louvre and Prado as a child.  Another important influence was Jean Cambier, a major Belgian collector of pre-Colombian and classical African art, one of my father’s closest friends. Through him, I was exposed to my own cultural history discovering powerful works created by the Songye, the Chokwe, and the Mangbetu people of the Congo. This encouraged me to research, find and explore how these art works had been produced and the significance of such historical works.

What are your main motivations and interests when it comes to collecting art?

Well, for me I approach collecting ideologically. There is a perception that I only collect black artists or artists from certain regions. I have said many times that “this to me is anti-artistic and turns a collection into an anecdotal accumulation of objects” which is devoid of any intellectual or authentic propensity. My collection includes artists born in the diaspora to the likes of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. My point is to make an African collection of art, not a collection of African art.

Personally, I’m more interested in art that confronts social and political issues, I like it when artistic creations challenge and disturb and the geography of Africa allows this due its colonial history past and present. If you take North Africa for example, many artists of Northern African origin like Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Fatmi Mounir or Kader Attia produce magnificent work related to immigration, human rights and war while confronting their heritage within the context of being born or based in Europe.

I saw a work by Berlin-based Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili, The Tempest Society at documenta 14 in Kassel recently and I was blown away as in the film she aptly captures the daily travails of inequality and racism that exists in France still today. Seemingly, impressive was the black obelisk, Das Fremdlinge und Flüchtlinge Monument (Monument for Strangers and Refugees) created by Nigerian artist Olu Oguibe and inscribed with words from the Book of Matthew written in Turkish, Arabic, German, and English. The extraordinary work which was awarded the 2017 Arnold Bode Prize from the city of Kassel is a remarkable interpretation of the immigrant story of persecution and flight.

Could you tell us a bit about your FONDATION SINDIKA DOKOLO – why you started it and what its main goals and aims are?

I have been collecting for many years but the turning point was really in 2003 when I had the opportunity to acquire the contemporary collection of African art of the late Hans Bogatzke, a noted German collector based in Belgium. This was really the beginning for what has become an adventure as I bought around six hundred works of art from his collection but kept around 250 works. The following year in 2004, I founded the African Collection of Contemporary Art in Luanda and steadily over the years have built up my collection which now holds more than 5000 works from classical art to well-known and emerging contemporary artists, and then out of this grew the foundation which was established in 2006.

I founded the foundation to help guide the development of African culture while exposing contemporary art in Africa to Angolans and to the rest of the continent and beyond. We have funded the production of works for a number of exhibitions such as The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists curated by Simon Njami. The show initiated by Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt also travelled to SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia and the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. We have also helped fund exhibition catalogues and publications and furthermore Fundação Sindika Dokolo has initiated over 600 events on the continent and supported 55,000 children in educational programmes, including the Trienal De Luanda

What are your plans for establishing new museums or gallery spaces in the future?

I have yet to build a museum but currently, the foundation is renovating Casa Manoel de Oliveira in Porto as a new HQ in Europe, designed by Pritzker prize winner and Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura. This is an extension of what we are doing in Luanda where we will have multi-disciplinary space so we can conceive exhibitions, display works from my classical and contemporary collection as well as initiate artistic and educational programs. The building was initially conceived in 1998, as an exhibition space and home for the noted film director Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015). Completed in 2013, its function was never realised and the building remained empty so we acquired it and we will announce detailed plans of the opening in the coming months. I still have plans to build a museum in Angola which houses both a classical and contemporary art collection as I think it is crucial that we pair our historical past with the present.

Who are the main artists in your collection and why did you choose to acquire their work?

When buying an artwork, my simple rule is that I need to like it and want to live it. The collection now holds many artists working in a number of mediums from painting, photography, sculpture and video installation and includes Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Stan Douglas, Chris Ofili to Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, Nick Cave and Robin Rhodes. There are works acquired from artists at the beginning of the career to now from Edson Chagas, Mustafa Maluka to Kiluanji Kia Henda, Ingrid Mwangi/Robert Hutter as well as a variety of works by artists which illustrate their diverse practices such as Yinka Shonibare, Otobong Nkanga, William Kentridge, Hank Willis Thomas, Tracey Rose, and Nástio Mosquito. A short while ago at Sotheby’s first Modern and Contemporary sale in London, I bought a selection of works  by Pascale Marthine Tayou, Willem Boshoff, Nicholas Hlobo, António Ole and Francisco Vidal.

How did your childhood and your experiences growing up influence and affect your love of art and the way you view and perceive art?

I was born in Kinshasa and grew up in both France and Belgium which I think definitely think affected my outlook especially on the subject of art from Africa. It was interesting to learn that our own cultural history was written for us by the West, for instance why is what should be deemed “classical” art often described as primitive or tribal. We, Africans never came up with such utterances. One of the key factors for building the collection was also to find ways of not only sharing the collection but also how to elevate the debate of African culture and heritage. Furthermore, I was astonished by how Africa and the African audience were completely ignored by the art world. I have said in past that “decades after our independences, we are still looking at ourselves through the eyes of others” and “I think it is time for Africa, for good or for bad, to be defined by the Africans themselves”. I mean this not only culturally but socially and politically. We, Africans need to take back full control of our artistic discourse and it needs to start from within. We are the ones that can really understand our own history from its colonial past in the relation to the current geopolitical landscape. It is great to see the interest contemporary art in Africa is generating within the art world but this must also be achieved and championed by Africans themselves, be it in art schools, institutions, galleries and by curators and collectors on the continent.

What has been your most memorable experience as an art collector and why?

I have so many but the recent collaboration of Fundação Sindika Dokolo with documenta 14 was inspiring as it was great to see so many artists of African descent taking part in the international exhibition. I am also proud of our recent repatriation project which we launched in 2015 that allows the foundation to advance a local and a global dialogue in the epic story of reparations of looted works from African civilizations. We recently helped find and return five works to the Dundo Museum in Angola, their original home and where they were last exhibited in the 70s before going ‘missing’.

How did the partnership between Fundação Sindika Dokolo and documenta 14 come about?

It was actually the team at documenta 14 that approached Fundação Sindika Dokolo about the possibility of sponsoring the exhibition.

What was the motivation and inspiration behind the partnership?

The motivation for us was that it helps to continue the foundation’s ongoing commitment to nurture and promote contemporary art from Africa. At the end of documenta 14 in both Athens and Kassel, Adam Szymczyk, the Artistic Director, and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Curator at Large, initiated a new exhibition bringing together the African artists which will travel to Luanda in Angola. The show feature works presented in documenta 14 re-shaped within the local framework of the city and the curators will add new artists from Africa and the diaspora.

What are the artists and works that are being shown in the exhibition?

The aim is to have all the artists and works being exhibited in Kassel and Athens shown in Angola but there is no definitive list as such yet. In keeping with the same process at documenta 14, it will be the decision of both Adam Szymczyk and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung to draw up a final line up of participating artists and works for the exhibition in Luanda. We are at the moment finalising venues across the city and both curators will decide how the exhibition and the works will be conceived.

What was the ultimate objective and ambition for the partnership?

The foundation didn’t want to simply just sponsor documenta 14, we wanted to find a way in which we could show the works on view in Kassel and Athens on the continent.

It was an appropriate opening to be able to bring the African artists and their works to exhibit in Luanda as it is rare for international exhibitions featuring artists of African descent travel to the continent. The last and only exhibition I recall was Simon Njami’s African Remix (2004) which as well as travelling from Germany to London, Paris and Tokyo ended its run in South Africa at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2007.

I think it is essential that Africans themselves are able to engage in the visual and critical discourse of work by artists from the continent as well as across the diaspora. Angolans — and other African countries — will have the opportunity to see work from an array of established visual talent embracing various mediums from photography and painting to video, performance and installation. You can’t and will never be able to capture a whole continent in a single exhibition but there is surely nothing wrong in showing its multiple nuances and complexities.

I would happily encourage for the show to travel onwards to another country on the continent be it Lagos, Addis Ababa or even Marrakesh, I will be interesting to see if this could be possible.

How will the conference complement the exhibition?

We wanted to create some sort of cultural dialogue around the exhibition and it seemed the best way to do this is to organise a conference. We felt it was important to establish a forum where there could be an exchange of ideas with documenta 14, the artists, curators and the local community.

There needed to be a platform to enact and develop a discussion around “the matter of Africanness” in the twenty-first century — whether in politics, philosophy, identity and contemporary art in Africa — and the African public to reflect through the works being exhibited on this fundamental issue. The specifics of conference are again not finalised and are being initiated by both Adam Szymczyk and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung.

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Mega-Collector Judith Neilson on her Passion for Contemporary Chinese Art and Future Projects

If you happen to bump into Judith Neilson while exploring Sydney’s amazing White Rabbit Gallery of Contemporary Chinese Art, you would be forgiven for thinking that she was just another one of the many visitors who tour the gallery’s much-anticipated exhibitions each year. Although she is the founder of the White Rabbit Gallery and one of the richest women in Australia, the Zimbabwe-born art collector and philanthropist is amazingly humble, unassuming, and down-to-earth – the antitype of the clichéd wealthy art collector stereotype.

Judith opened the White Rabbit Gallery in 2009 to showcase her ever-growing collection, which currently consists of around 2500 works by more than 500 artists, making is one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of contemporary Chinese art. The gallery presents two new exhibitions a year, each involving a full rehang, with the next exhibition, titled “The Sleeper Awakes,” due to open on 9 March. Taking its titled from HG Wells’s novel The Sleeper Awakes, the exhibition shines a spotlight on the dichotomous characteristics of Chinese society.

Judith was inspired to establish the White Rabbit Gallery during a trip to Beijing in 2001. She was so impressed with the “creative energy and technical quality” of the works she encountered, that she wanted to share the works with people outside of China. Judith continues to contribute to the development of the cultural fabric of Sydney and Australia with new projects such as the Dangrove storage facility as well as the AUD$41 million “Phoenix” performance space, sculpture garden, and gallery which is due to open this year.

In the interview below, Judith talks about her passion for art and architecture as well as the development of her new Dangrove Project – a new state-of-the-art storage and education facility.

When did you first start collecting art and what inspired and motivated you to start collecting?

I have collected art since I was a child. Our home was filled with art and art-making, and collecting was a natural extension of that.

Why and how did you develop such an interest and focus on Chinese contemporary art?

I'd collected art from many places, but when I first went to China, in the late 1990s, I was really struck by the quality of the art and the enthusiasm of the artists. As a lifelong collector I am not that easy to impress, yet I saw one artwork after another that I wanted to buy. The contemporary art scene in China had an excitement about art and its possibilities that I hadn’t come across in a long time.

How would you describe your approach and philosophy when it comes to collecting art?

I am not collecting for resale and profit, so I don’t worry about auction prices and artist popularity. I’ve seen a vast number of artworks over the years, so my eye is pretty well educated. And it’s my eye that determines what I collect—I buy what I genuinely like.

What made you decide to open the White Rabbit Gallery and what is your vision for its future?

I wanted to share my collection of Chinese contemporary art with as many people as possible, especially people who’d never visited an art museum or gallery before. White Rabbit has succeeded far beyond my expectations. I hope it will continue to show people that contemporary art at its best is beautiful, challenging, exciting. And I hope it will let people view and appreciate art in their own way, without being told what they should and shouldn’t like.

How do you choose which artists and artworks to include in your collection?

I don’t pay attention to names, it’s the artwork I care about. It’s all visual. The work has to grab me and stay with me. For me, art isn’t an intellectual exercise, it’s a kind of romance.

Tell us a bit about your new Dangrove project – your goals and aims for the project and your vision for its future?

Dangrove is a huge facility on the site of a former warehouse. It will house the entire White Rabbit Collection, which is growing all the time. It's specially designed by the architect Alec Tzannes and due for completion by the end of this year. It will be a world leader in art storage. Everything about it is state-of-the-art, from individually climate-controlled spaces to conservation areas.

What are some of your recent acquisitions?

I’d rather not single anything out, because I like everything I buy and the White Rabbit Collection is growing all the time. I also prefer not to give the impression that I’m promoting particular artists.

How did your childhood and your experiences growing up influence and effect your love of art and the way you view and perceive art?

My sisters and I grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Our parents were very creative, and they encouraged us in a huge range of artistic activities—sculpture, weaving, pottery, screen printing, batik, calligraphy, watercolour painting. And of course we also saw and collected basketwork, pottery and paintings made by ordinary Africans. So I grew up with a love of art and a very broad conception of what art meant. That was further extended when I worked as a graphic designer.

What has been your most memorable experience as an art collector and why?

It’s hard to single out just one. One of the first things I ever collected was a bell. I loved its shape and I loved looking at it. I had brass bells just like it buried in the foundations of Indigo Slam. One of my most treasured memories is of meeting the South African artist Dumile Feni, who painted life in the black townships in the 1960s. I have two of his paintings and will never forget him.

You also have a passion for architecture. Could you explain how this is reflected in Indigo Slam and the Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture?

With Indigo Slam, I was starting from scratch, so I wanted to make something great. The architect, William Smart, designed the White Rabbit Gallery, so he knows how I think and vice versa. One inspiration for Indigo Slam was the Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza, who uses concrete in a sculptural way. I also wanted the building structure to do some of the work that furnishings normally do. So instead of curtains there are vertical timber blinds operated by a built-in mechanism. And the building shell has slits and skylights that bring this wonderful soft light into the whole house.

Having a lovely secure home made me extra conscious of the plight of people who find themselves suddenly ejected from their homes and forced to live in tent cities and the like. My main aim in establishing the Chair in Architecture at the University of New South Wales was to fund research on innovative ways to house people displaced in large numbers by wars and natural disasters.

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Isaac Julien’s award-winning 1989 film “Looking for Langston” is one of the influential British artist’s first films. The seminal work was created while he was a member of Sankofa Film and Video Collective, “Looking for Langston” is a “lyrical exploration - and recreation - of the private world of poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) and his fellow black artists and writers who formed the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s.”

Shot in black and white, the film noir-style cinematic masterpiece explores issues of memory and desire, expression and repression, through a multilayered narrative, set in a surreal world best described as 1920s Harlem speakeasy meets 1980s London underground nightclub. The exhibition “Film-Noir Angels” Looking For Langston at Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery until March 3 showcases the film alongside a series of new, large-scale photographs and original silver gelatin photographic works.

In this episode of TheAlist.Art podcast, Julien talks about the inspiration for “Looking for Langston” and discusses the significant of the works in his exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.

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Austrian artist Hubert Scheibl’s website biography epitomizes the avant-garde origins of the Vienna-based gestural abstract painter. It reads: “Born under water, 360 times turned, studied. Lives and works better elsewhere and in Vienna.”

Known for his intense use of color and strong brushstrokes, Sheibl emerged in the 1980s as part of the “Neue Wilde” (i.e. New Fauves) group of artists, whose large format pictures are characterized by a unique defiantly abstract painting style with broad, wild brushstrokes in exuberant colors.              

During his decades-long career, Sheibl has exhibited all over the world including at the Venice Biennale and the Sao Paulo Biennale. His work is held in major institutions such as the Albertina Collection (Austria), Centre Pompidou (France), and National Museum Beijing (China).

Visitors to one of Sheibl’s current exhibitions at the Galerie Belvedere in Vienna (titled Hubert Scheibl. Fly) can win drawings directly from the artist by posting a photo taken in front of one of the artist’s painting with the hashtag #flyscheiblfly

Nic Forrest spoke to Sheibl at the opening of his latest exhibition at Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney, Australia. Titled “Riffs of Real Time,” Sheibl’s first exhibition in Australia showcases works from the last twelve years of the artist’s career.

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Fashion Mogul Yasuharu Ishikawa's Bold Art Museum Ambitions

Okayama–born Japanese fashion entrepreneur and avid art collector Yasuharu Ishikawa has a lot to live up to. He has been earmarked as a next-gen Tadashi Yanai, founder of influential fashion brand Uniqlo, and compared to Yusaku Maezawa, founder of online fashion mall Zozotown. Other than the fact that they are both in the fashion business themselves, what makes Yanai and Maezawa particularly relevant is that they are also both art collectors, with the latter making headlines in May 2017 when he paid US$110.5 million for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s untitled 1982 skull painting.

Ishikawa himself is the CEO of the highly successful fashion retailer Stripe International Inc. and the founder of the Ishikawa Foundation, which aims to promote and enrich the city of Okayama through a combination of cultural and business initiatives. He is also the producer of the Okayama Art Summit, which he founded in 2016 with the aim of “making Okayama into a creative city that, twenty years from now, will be able to powerfully communicate its message worldwide.” Another way that Ishikawa plans to promote the city of Okayama is by building an eponymous art museum there.

TheAList.Art’s Nic Forrest got in touch with Mr Ishikawa and asked him a few questions.

When did you start collecting art and why?

I have several reasons for starting to collect art; however, the most meaningful motivation was an encounter with On Kawara’s works. That experience sparked my interest in art. My collection started when I purchased a dozen sets of “Date paintings” by On Kawara.

What is the focus of you collection and which artists form the basis of the collection?

My main interest is conceptual art. My collection is usually focused on living and active artists’ works.

What are your main interests and ambitions when it comes to developing your art collection?

My ambition is to build an art museum and to exhibit my art collection widely. I expect the audience to grow their imagination and creativity through seeing the artworks.

What sparked your interest in conceptual art and why do you like conceptual art so much?

Conceptual art always shows me different aspects of matters, and the new perspectives help my strategic management to head in a positive direction when it is traditional to be conservative.

What was the inspiration and motivation behind the development of the Ishikawa Foundation? What are your plans for the future development of the Ishikawa Foundation?

I would like to vitalize my hometown of Okayama through art. The city has beautiful nature, rich food cultures, and a mild climate. It is worth visiting Okayama from other cities and abroad. In addition, Ishikawa Foundation is also aiming to vitalize the economy and education of Okayama to construct a more prosperous city.

What was the inspiration and motivation behind the launch of the Okayama Art Summit and what are your plans for its future?

When I visited documenta in Germany five years ago, I decided to have these bring these kings of projects in my hometown Okayama. I hope that continuing the Okayama Art Summit leads to Okayama becoming an artistic city.

You are planning to build the most influential conceptual art museum in the world in your hometown of Okayama. Can you share your plans and ambitions for the museum – what you envision it will look like, the types of exhibitions it will hold, and its aims and goals?

It is strictly confidential at present to surprise you! Please come and interview me again when the project becomes more concrete.

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Nic Forrest interviews German artist Katharina Grosse about her Sydney Festival installation at Carriageworks.Titled "THE HORSE TROTTED ANOTHER COUPLE OF METRES, THEN IT STOPPED," the installation consists of more than 8000 square metres of painted fabric that has been suspended, draped, knotted, and hung throughout the industrial architecture of the Carriageworks building.

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Art Collecting Tycoon Budi Tek on Art, Museums, and Mortality

Budi Tek is undoubtedly one of the world’s most influential art collectors. The BIllionaire Indonesian-Chinese businessman, patron, and philanthropist, who made his fortune in the agriculture industry, began his collection in 2004 and has since amassed one of the world’s greatest collections of Chinese contemporary art. In 2007 he founded the Yuz Foundation “to promote contemporary art and artists, and contribute to various art initiatives,” and then in 2014 he opened the non-profit Yuz Museum in Shanghai to showcase his collection and to present exhibitions.

It’s no secret that Mr Tek is fighting pancreatic cancer – for the second time around. And it’s no secret that the diagnosis has caused Mr Tek to take rethink his future and the future of his museum and art collection. Which is why Mr Tek has taken the initiative to transform his private Shanghai museum, which is currently owned by a limited company, into a public institution. Mr Tek has already applied for non-profit status for his Yuz Foundation and plans to transfer ownership of the museum to the Yuz Foundation once the non-profit status is confirmed.

Mr Tek was recently awarded the title of Officer of the Legion of Honor by the president of the French Republic. Established in 1802, the Legion of Honor is the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits The title was bestowed upon Mr Tek in recognition of his “effort in advancing the cultural communication and cooperation between the two countries (China and France), as well as his contributions to the development of human society and mankind welfares.” The award is a fitting tribute to Mr Tek’s tireless efforts to advance communications between China and France.

TheAList.Art’s Nic Forrest got in touch with Mr Tek following the bestowal of the award and asked him a few questions.

When did you start collecting art and why?

I started to collect Chinese contemporary art in early 2000. The very first acquisition was one large painting from a young artist. Although the artist is not one of the so called “four kings” or a top artist, but when got it, I was very happy. The painting itself touched me deeply. Over those years, from 2004 to 2006, I collected a lot, and had a learning process in collecting art.

I myself am Indonesian Chinese. While I grew up in Indonesia, the majority of Indonesian populations were still laborers. But a few Chinese possess a large amount of money and have connections with the officials. Some of them did live in a lavish lifestyle, thus they hurt other groups’ ethnical emotion. So the Chinese population in Indonesia gave people an impression that they are rich but ignorant; they have no culture and are very mean.

After entering 21st century, Indonesia becomes a real democratic country. Many things become equal. The distribution of wealth is relatively equal. It is no longer like before. But on the other hand, how can we eliminate that bias on Chinese? We are not the same group any more—the Chinese is not like what they imagine.

As a new generation of the Chinese, we think we should build relationship with other groups. We have our own culture and tradition, and our art, etc. We hope we can share them. My interest is laid on Chinese contemporary art. Through contemporary art, artists talk about something different from politics. So sharing the art through Yuz collection artworks, we will give people a message. It is to realize cultural exchange by means of art. Even though you do not understand Chinese, and many Chinese do not understand Indonesian, we can communicate through art. My purpose is to set a platform like this, that’s how I started Yuz collections.

What is the focus of you collection and which artists form the basis of the collection? What are your main interests and ambitions when it comes to developing your art collection? Who are your favorite artists and which artists do you think are the most important to promote and acquire at the moment?

I spent years to learn which artists were important and which artists weren’t. In the end, I came to feel that a lot of works I once saw as important were no longer important anymore. This was a learning process, and during the process, every work in the collection has its meaning to me. Through the process, I have formed my collecting strategy and Yuz collection has formed its system.

One section of Yuz collection is sorting out the “history” thread of Chinese contemporary art history, by collecting the significant art works, especially oil paintings done in 1980s and 1990s, by those Chinese contemporary artists.

Another section are large-scale installations. I like to collect them, they are visually impressive, spiritually strong, like Maurizio Cattelan’s Untitled (Olive Tree), Fred Sandback’s Seven-part Right-angled Triangular Construction, Anselm Kiefer’s Fate of the Nations. Most of them are from western artists. The two sections echo with each other, forming the Yuz collection.

And in recent years, I’m not only looking at the past art history, I’m also exploring young artists and their new works, the works they have done with new media, to study the popular culture, to presenting the influence of the Internet era. I believe they are the future of art history.

I have an ambition to build a great contemporary art collection. The collection has a strong Chinese tradition that has been mixed with contemporary idea, while also explores the Western contemporary art’s history and future, but not limited to them, it looks into the development of contemporary art development in other regions as well, like Japan, Korea or Southeast Asia . A collection is a kind of cultural capital, more than a property. It is not only a financial issue, but also a social responsibility. It includes political, economic, and social elements.

What was the inspiration and motivation behind the development of the Yuz Museum and Foundation?

There is an old saying in Chinese, the true joy of joys is the joy that joys in the joy of others. The traditional approach to collecting is to seal things away, but I want my collection to be open, so that more people can share these outstanding works of art. I have entered the contemporary art field as a collector, but merely collecting artworks is not enough to satisfy me.

I hope to share the joy that art brings me with others and provide artists with a setting that can take in their artworks. To date, the best method I have been able to think of is to move from collecting artworks to establishing an organization, an art museum, and to finding a way to sustain it.

The year of 2008 marked a turning point in my career as a collector. I set up a non-profit art foundation in Jakarta, the Yuz foundation. There are three guiding principles of Yuz foundation: first, to collect contemporary art; second, to promote the art museum movement; and third, to play an active role in social welfare. As a patriotic overseas Chinese person, an Indonesian citizen and someone who has married into a Shanghai family, in 2014, I established Yuz museum in Shanghai. Foundation supports the museum, through initiating a lot of external communications and collaborations, like an invisible hand. The museum is a platform, which transfer the foundation collections and communication achievements into tangible exhibitions, promoting the exhibition development of contemporary art and to enhance the public’s understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. Although the physical nature of the foundation and the museum are different, the philosophies are the same,

What are your plans for the future development of the Yuz Museum and Foundation?

It is not a secret that I have had pancreatic cancer for one and a half years. It changed my horizon of being a human being. I’m still living and I’m still a useful person. Now I’m applying for non-profit status for Yuz foundation. Currently Yuz foundation’s ownership belongs to my company. But I want to turn this foundation into a public organization and can get public support, and then the museum and its growing programs supported by the foundation can be governed by a board of trustees, like the model that a lot of western museums have now. Other than this, Yuz foundation is also searching for a second site in China to house the foundation collections, to build a second museum to permanently show these collection artworks. And of course, the collection keeps growing. I have this wish that when students in China want to study Chinese contemporary art history, to study contemporary art history, they will come to these two museums.

How did your childhood and your experiences growing up influence and effect your love of art and the way you view and perceive art?

My education background is close to Han culture. I studied in Singapore and Hong Kong. They are all related to Chinese. At the time of late 1970s, in those days while I was in high school, I listened to Chinese folk songs from Radio Singapore every night. Until now I still can sing a lot of folk songs, including those revolutionary songs that many Chinese cannot sing. I developed a passion for Han culture. Now, in my system of collecting, I have a deep interest in collecting Chinese contemporary art, because they are things that I learned since a young age.

What are the most recent acquisitions of artworks that you have made?      

In the last year, yuz collection acquired quite a few works, following the idea of collecting the history of Chinese Contemporary Art. One of them is Fang Lijun’s Series I No.5, which is the artist’s first try of oil paintings during 1990-1991, with his well-known bald figures.

Another recent acquisition is Senior Liu Wei’s Swimmer. This piece was exhibited in 1994 International Biennial of Sao Paulo. It is a very specific piece in Chinese contemporary art history.

The other new acquisition is Wang Guangyi’s The Mao Grid, one of the significant works from his early artist life. The Yuz collection has many works from Wang Guangyi, especially quite a few before the artist produced his “great criticism” series. The artist himself is an eminent pop-art artist.

While collecting these works, I’m always looking at the art history and I believe that the longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.

At the same time, more and more works created by emerging artists are entering the Yuz collection. They are the future of the art history. Every year in the Yuz museum we do exhibitions to present these new art to the public. Like last year, the Yuz museum organized the OVERPOP show and exhibited a group of newly acquired Yuz collection works. These art works are from a party of young artists, using new media, new materials to interpret the living present. The exhibition was very successful, very popular with visitors, and received great credits from the art community. Many young artists from the show received recognized prizes in the contemporary art world.