Tehching Hsieh Recognised with $30K Award amid Dia Beacon Retrospective
The veteran Taiwanese American artist received a Special Achievement Award from the Hong Foundation in recognition of five decades of radical performance practice. Save to My Ocula
The Taiwan-based Hong Foundation has recognised artist Tehching Hsieh with the 2025 Tung Chung Prize Special Achievement Award of 1 million NTD—just over 30,000 USD—coinciding with his current survey exhibition at New York’s Dia Beacon.
Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999, which opened last weekend, is the artist’s first comprehensive retrospective, showcasing his five One Year Performances and the radical 13-year project Tehching Hsieh 1986–1999—durational works that collapsed the boundaries between art and life.
The exhibition marks a landmark moment for Hsieh, who emigrated to New York from Taiwan in 1974 as a migrant worker, and to pursue his artistic career.
Among the show’s highlights is documentation from Hsieh’s collaborative project Rope Piece (1983–1984), with Linda Montano, presented for the first time in this exhibition.
‘The Hong Foundation was founded 54 years ago, Dia Art Foundation 51 years ago, and I have lived in the United States for 50 years. We are innovators walking through the same era,’ says Hsieh.
Meanwhile, the Hong Foundation’s executive director, Grace Cheung, remarks: ‘In today’s context, his works speak powerfully of migration, freedom, endurance, and personal belief.’
The Hong Foundation’s annual prize awards 30,000 USD to an outstanding practitioner in art and literature, and was established in 2015. The Hong Foundation was founded by the family behind one of Taiwan’s leading electrical appliance brands.
Hsieh’s retrospective is largely funded by public and private support from Taiwan, and follows the artist’s major donation of 11 works to Dia Beacon last year.
On long-term view at Dia Beacon until 2027, the retrospective unfolds amid an institutional downturn in the U.S.—a moment when the artist’s lifelong inquiry into freedom and immigrant labor feels pointedly resonant with the fragility of cultural infrastructures themselves. —[O]
Main image: Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance 1978–1979 (Cage Piece) (1978–1979). Exhibition view: Lifeworks 1978–1999, Dia Beacon, New York (4 October 2025–2027). © Tehching Hsieh. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio.
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