Sun Yuan and Peng Yu Old People’s Home

NARRATOR:

Can you imagine collecting a work when it is just a concept, long before it is completed? This is what Dr Uli Sigg did after he met the artists Peng Yu and Sun Yuan in the 2000s.

ULI SIGG:

We knew each other, in fact, quite well. And so they told me about works to be completed or accomplished, and I used to tell them about exhibitions I planned, and we would see how they matched—their idea, my idea. That's how the whole thing came about. And then they presented me this idea.

NARRATOR:

This is how Old People’s Home developed from a few drawings into these wax human sculptures, first exhibited in Switzerland and now at M+. Look at the faces—you may recognise military, political, and religious leaders, even philosophers.

ULI SIGG:

The idea was they should not look exactly like people who are either still alive or died, but just resemble, remind us of figures we may associate. But again, they are not them, but they should make us associate to these people and to these ideas who once were very powerful but maybe today are really outdated. But these old men with their old ideas still dominate the world. And it is as if they were brought into a kind of old people's asylum. They long lost the touch to (with) the real world.

The artists told me it's also a kind of a game. They play with these old people just as they play with us and with the world.

NARRATOR:

Conceptualised over 20 years ago, the work managed to stand the test of time, speaking to the world we are living in.

NARRATOR:

Old People’s Home is an installation created by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu in 2007. It consists of thirteen sculptures of elderly men sitting in electric wheelchairs. The sculptures are made of fibreglass and silicone, and each one is dressed and accessorised differently. In the exhibition M+ Sigg Collection: Another Story, which opened in 2023, this work is displayed in a space that measures 10 metres deep and 13 metres wide.

From the ways these hyper-realistic sculptures are dressed and presented, they resemble politicians, admirals, generals, bishops, and dictators from various parts of the world that have grown old, though none of them can be clearly identified. Most of them look frail, their eyes cloudy and lifeless. They are either bald or have white hair and beards. There are also brown liver spots on their sagging, heavily wrinkled faces. Slouched in their electric wheelchairs, they move around the space at an exceptionally slow pace.

These men wear different types of dark clothing, from suits and religious clothing to a Zhongshan suit. One man wears a headdress and long robe common in the Middle East. Another wears a military uniform with several badges pinned on it. One man has a cassock and a necklace with a cross pendant. Some of them are in oversized clothing with unbuttoned collars and loose neckties, which makes them look shrunken and exhausted.

These elderly men have different sitting postures as well. One of them has his head lowered, his upper body leaning to one side as if he is dozing off, while another leans on a cane and looks down in contemplation. A man with a hunched back sits collapsed in his wheelchair, and another one has his head tilted backwards, eyes closed, his legs spread wide, looking fast asleep.

A few of them carry objects, like a landmine that has the shape of a military cooking pot, a white glove, a beer can, or a newspaper, held in their hands or resting on their laps. One man, sitting up and looking straight ahead, grips a soft whip with one hand and clutches the arm of his wheelchair with the other.

The wheelchairs move around very slowly within the rectangular display space, enclosed by a low wall. Whenever a wheelchair is about to bump into a wall or another wheelchair, it automatically changes direction, so the elderly men seem to wander aimlessly without end.