The Museum of Asian Art is receiving a significant addition to its collection of contemporary East Asian art: the monumental photographic installation Family Tree by Chinese artist Mao Tongqiang is being donated to the museum’s collection from the Sigg Collection. The Sigg Collection was built up by Dr. Uli and Rita Sigg and is considered one of the world’s most important collections of contemporary Chinese art. The work will be presented for the first time in Berlin from November 28, 2025, in the exhibition “Everything Under Heaven: Harmony in the Family and the State,” curated by Maria Sobotka, at the Humboldt Forum.
Image above: Exhibition view Mao Tongqiang Family Tree in “Everything Under Heaven. Harmony in the Family and the State,” photo: Maria Sobotka.
Covering an area of around 400 square meters, “Family Tree” is one of Mao Tongqiang’s most impressive works. The work was created over several years of intensive field research and includes images of around 1,000 families. It shows the diversity of contemporary Chinese family structures and at the same time refers to the profound changes that China has undergone since the Confucian-influenced family order of the imperial era to the mobile reality of life in the 21st century.
The historical holdings of the Museum of Asian Art, which documents art and material culture spanning many centuries, are significantly expanded by Family Tree. The work offers a direct view of the social transformation processes in modern China and complements the longue durée of the collection with a concise contemporary perspective. The interplay of these temporal levels reveals how radically social orders, household forms, and everyday realities have changed within a few decades.
