Mainland Chinese artist Wang Tuo wins M+ museum’s US$64,000 Sigg Prize 2023; jury was ‘moved by the sophisticated imagery and intricate storytelling’

Wang Tuo’s monumental prize-winning work ‘The Northeast Tetralogy’ is a set of four films that question the record and interpretation of history in China

The work will remain on view until January 14 in the Main Hall Gallery at M+, to which entry is free, together with the shortlisted works by five other artists

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Mainland Chinese artist Wang Tuo with his award-winning video work “The Northeast Tetralogy” at the M+ Sigg Prize 2023 exhibition, in the West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong. Photo: Dan Leung, courtesy of M+ Hong Kong

Published: 11:15am, 8 Jan 2024

Beijing-based artist Wang Tuo has won the Sigg Prize 2023, Hong Kong’s M+ museum of visual culture announced on January 4.

The monumental prize-winning work, called The Northeast Tetralogy (2018-2021) – described as a multi-year, multi-chapter and multichannel film project – is a set of four films shown on different screens at once.

Chapter one is based on the true-crime story of Zhang Koukou, a Chinese migrant worker who spent two decades plotting his revenge over his mother’s death, eventually committing the deed – which saw him murder three people – in 2018.

Subsequent chapters turn to the fates of different protagonists who lived in tumultuous times generations before the birth of the vengeful Zhang.

Installation view of Wang Tuo’s “The Northeast Tetralogy”. Photo: Dan Leung, courtesy of M+ Hong Kong

Some, like Guo Qinguang, a student protester in the May Fourth Movement of 1919 – a Chinese cultural and anti-imperialist political movement – were real. Others, such as an elderly intellectual living alone during the Chinese civil war, were made up.