Indonesian of Chinese origin, art collector Dudi Tek died

His fortune acquired in chicken breeding allowed him to invest in contemporary art and to open a museum in Djakarta and another in Shanghai. Anxious to establish bridges between crops, he offered, as she approached his death, occurred on March 18, part of his collection in Los Angeles Lacma. He was 64 years old.

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If you have eaten chicken in Asia, it’s probably he who sold you. If you visited and appreciated the exhibition of the Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi, in 2013, at the Museum of Modern Art of Paris, or Adel Abdessémed at the Pompidou Center the previous year, it is thanks to him: he has greatly helped to finance them. If the Californians will soon discover the Chinese contemporary art in Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), it is still from his fact: knowing his condemned, he offered them whole sections of his collection, also presented in the museum that he founded in Shanghai. Dudiardjo, says “Budi” Tek died in Hongkong on March 18 of the consequences of pancreas cancer.

Born in Jakarta on October 27, 1957 (and not 1959, often cited in the press), he descends from a family of Chinese origin who had fled his country torn by the civil wars in the 1920s. in Indonesia , his parents exploited farms and raised poultry. They were prosperous enough to send their sons to study finances and marketing first in Singapore and in the United States. Sage Decision: Back to the farm, Budi Tek takes the reins of the company, makes it progress to a point as it is introduced to the Djakarta Stock Exchange in 1993. It is rich and then, as well as it entrusted in an interview granted in 2012 to the magazine the point, loses everything: the 1998 Asian crisis sees the severely devalued Indonesian rupee, riots burst into the country, and a strong xenophobic feeling develops, particularly aimed at the Chinese emigrants like him .

Fight against xenophobia

He takes refuge with his family in Shanghai, undertakes to revive his business in Indonesia since his new base and rebuilt his fortune. When he appears, first shy, in the world of art where he begins to collect at the Mitan of the 2000s, it is nicknamed “the king of the chicken”. Very early, in 2008, he opened a first private museum in Djakarta, the Yuz Museum, a forged name from his Chinese surname, Yu, to whom the “Z” adds, according to him, as one “S”, a Family dimension. He shows Chinese contemporary artists: “I wanted, he confided to the point, that Chinese culture be appreciated in Indonesia. Because I am Chinese. Chinese Indonesia. I wanted to make the link, a kind of Bridge to make my contribution to Indonesian society. “His way of fighting xenophobia suffered a few years earlier. This will become one of his engines: bring to each other’s what he has discovered in others.

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/Media reports.