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2025
TUNG CHUNG PRIZE
TUNG CHUNG PRIZE SPEICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
TEHCHING HSIEH
2025/10/08
The Hong Foundation proudly announces its significant support of Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999 at Dia Beacon. To mark this historic moment, The Hong Foundation presents Tehching Hsieh with the Tung Chung Prize Special Achievement Award, recognizing his extraordinary contributions to contemporary and performance art worldwide, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Prize— an honor dedicated to fostering artists of Taiwanese origin or base.
Hailed as one of the most influential and uncompromising figures in performance art, Taiwan-born Tehching Hsieh has profoundly reshaped the field through his groundbreaking lifeworks. Since the late 1970s, in his five iconic One Year Performances, Hsieh subjected himself to extreme conditions—living in confinement, punching a time clock every hour, surviving entirely outdoors, being tied to another person, and even refusing to make art （No Art Piece）—before extending this radical practice into his thirteen-year project Tehching Hsieh 1986–1999. Conceived on the scale of years, these lifeworks pushed the boundaries of art, time, and existence, inspiring artists across generations and cultures.
Established in 2015 in memory of Tung-Chung Chien, the Tung Chung Prize is a 1 million NTD annual award supporting exceptional creative output. Over the past decade, the Prize has supported both literary and contemporary artists whose perspectives resonate both within and beyond the Mandarin cultural sphere, affirming the Foundation’s mission to nurture artistic visions across generations and mediums.
Reflecting on this recognition, Hsieh remarked: “The Hong Foundation has supported cultural workers for over fifty years. It is a truly admirable family foundation. The Hong Foundation was founded 54 years ago, Dia Art Foundation 50 years ago, and I have lived in the United States for 50 years. We are innovators walking through the same era. The Foundation’s support for my exhibition at Dia, and its decision to present me with the 2025 Tung Chung Prize 10th Anniversary Special Award, carry profound meaning. As a Taiwanese and as an artist, I am deeply honored.”
ARTIST
TEHCHING HSIEH
Tehching Hsieh was born in Nan Chou, Taiwan, in 1950. The Taiwanese-American artist is one of the world’s most respected performance makers, renowned for a series of works in the late 1970s and early ’80s that revolutionized the conceptual, physical, aesthetic, and temporal limits of performance art.
Hsieh dropped out of high school in 1967 and took up painting. After finishing his compulsory army service (1970–73), his first solo show was held at the gallery of the American News Bureau in Taipei. Shortly after his debut presentation, he stopped painting entirely and began a series of works dealing with action and its serial traces in documents, culminating in Jump (1973), in which he recorded his fall from a second-story window, breaking both of his ankles. Starting in the late 1970s, Hsieh made a series of five One Year Performances, and in 1986 announced his Thirteen Year Plan—he would spend the next 13 years making art but not showing it publicly. Since then, released from the restriction of not showing his works, Hsieh has exhibited at major museums, festivals, and biennales, including at the Guggenheim, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Tate Modern, London; and at the Venice Biennale, where he represented Taiwan in 2017. His works are in the collections of Dia Art Foundation, New York; M+, Hong Kong; and Tate Modern. Hsieh lives in Brooklyn.
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