The migration routes of the art world resemble those of migratory birds, with people constantly shuttling north and south, following the seasons, trends, and events, tirelessly gathering and dispersing. Every late March, artists, galleries, institutions, and collectors flock to Hong Kong with fresh works and curiosity, preening and displaying their splendid plumage in the alternately warm and cool southern breezes. The constant calibration and adjustment of daily routines are neither good nor bad in themselves—they are merely objective, matter-of-fact habitual actions. Therefore, the validity of any observation or critique must be established within a fluctuating narrative woven from the warp of past and present and the weft of self and other. What one ultimately perceives should not be the shortcomings of others, but the changes unfolding within oneself.
1. The Longitudinal View: Hong Kong’s Three Post-Pandemic Years
This March, Hong Kong’s weather vacillated between near-summer heat and chilly spring rains. Since Hong Kong reopened its borders in January 2023, we have now experienced three editions of Art Basel Hong Kong. In 2023, one could keenly feel the various doubts and sell-offs affecting the Hong Kong, or indeed, the Chinese art market. By 2024, the tide of capital was shifting between China, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand, continuing a slow, tentative adjustment. This year, however, has seen institutions and creative practices, galleries and art fairs, return to a mean across multiple dimensions of fact and imagination. ABHK undoubtedly plays a role akin to convective cloud masses in this season, stimulating the local and surrounding ecology in its annual, measured cycle of renewal.
Thus, the core conversational zones centered on the Kowloon Peninsula and Hong Kong Island began to buzz from mid-March. From an independent curator’s perspective, immersed in exploration, a fulfilling and enjoyable art marathon itinerary typically unfolds progressively across four key areas: Kowloon, Central, Causeway Bay, and Wong Chuk Hang. One encounters, from diverse exhibition formats to spatial presentations of work, issues of ecology, geography, identity, and gender rapidly enveloping the senses in familiar yet subtly different tones. In truth, regardless of where people are flocking from to Hong Kong at this time—apart from some physiological need to congregate on schedule—the primary drivers likely remain a renewed curiosity about this region, a desire for projection, and a need for verification.
Similar to the long-flourishing trade hub on the banks of the Huangpu River, Hong Kong, as a port center connecting East Asia with Southeast Asia and the Commonwealth, has a foundational character defined by pragmatic circulation markets and flexible negotiation styles. Yet, unlike the rich, temperate customs of the Yangtze River Delta, Hong Kong’s waters and shores have never truly been calm. Beneath its colorful urban facade lie sharp, even caustic reflections that, in some way, shape its contradictory and restless unique expression—this is also why our gaze so often turns towards that nearby archipelago. However, how have galleries and spaces, forced to relocate in recent years due to issues like rising rents, adapted their Hong Kong strategies and artwork selections, and how has this impacted their project presentations and reputations? What issues are Hong Kong artists revealing through the translation of their exhibitions? Are the exhibitions during this year’s art fair reflecting changes in Hong Kong’s contemporary art ecology? And what sentiments does Hong Kong reflect for us, and we for Hong Kong? These were roughly the signals I perceived and distilled during this journey.
2. Zoom-in: A Galloping Tour Around the Island
A short MTR ride of a few stations, through the cross-harbour tunnel under Victoria Harbour, and emerging above ground twenty minutes later lands one in Central. The blue Island Line connects Central, Wan Chai, and Causeway Bay, home to several gallery spaces I planned to focus on this day: the temporary Capsule Shanghai space in Central, Edouard Malingue Gallery on See On Street, and PHD Group perched in the rooftop garden of an Eastern District commercial center.
The distances between them are neither too far nor too close; a leisurely walk could be extended to Sheung Wan and North Point, with the ten-plus minutes of walking providing perfect buffer time to digest one’s thoughts. Capsule Shanghai has rented a third-floor corner space on Hollywood Road, famous between Sheung Wan and Central, for a 21-day group exhibition. Assorted installations, sculptures, and wall-based works meticulously construct internal and external narrative threads within the compact, club-like white cube street-level space. The viewer’s visual focus shifts from Nicki Cherry’s inverted legs in Holding Pattern upon entry, to Elizabeth Jaeger’s grey sprite scattered on the snowy white floor, to the reclining or curled black and brown ceramic dogs by the window. The gallery’s volume-to-content ratio and rhythm felt harmonious and intriguing under the arrangement of Hong Kong curator Zoie Yung.
Weaving through streets and alleys generally eastward, one soon arrives at H Queen’s, location of this year’s small-scale art fair, Supper Club, and a building historically gathered with blue-chip galleries. Over the past few years, Pearl Lam Galleries and Hauser & Wirth have withdrawn from the building for their respective strategic reasons. Supper Club, which debuted last March at the Fringe Club, is jointly organized by several local Hong Kong institutions, curators, and venues, bringing together over twenty emerging quality galleries to build their own stage, equally capable of attracting attention and capital. Differing from last year’s club corridor format, this year’s Supper Club, sponsored by H Queen’s, moved directly into the heart of Central, evoking a sense of spirited independence, while the participating galleries and artists showcased maximally differentiated stylistic considerations within their limited slots.
In Hong Kong’s post-pandemic era, Supper Club’s co-founders, Willem Molesworth and Ysabelle Cheung, also founded the contemporary gallery PHD Group two years earlier, located on the top floor of a private commercial building in Causeway Bay—they are quintessential “serial cultural entrepreneurs.” The entry of such supernovas generally signals a renewal of both market and content. This time, PHD Group presented the solo project “Animale” by artist Yuriko Sasaoka. She utilizes the combinatory flexibility of split-screen imagery to create collages of eyes, facial features, and other elements, crafting bizarre yet comical visual experiences through puppet-like, stuttering motions. Although the exhibition space is small, the highly saturated, dopamine-fueled colors and the inherent tension of the installations compensate for spatial limitations, allowing viewers to quickly enter another surreal world. PHD Group’s roster of collaborating artists is not long, but by promoting Yuriko Sasaoka to the Power Station of Art in Shanghai and Michele Chu to the significant institution Para Site and this year’s ABHK gallery booth, its niche market acumen and deep brand strategy undoubtedly represent an alternative survival method compared to traditional gallery giants.
If Capsule Shanghai’s mixed group show was a matter of fortuitous timing and space, and Supper Club’s lightweight fair a story of collaboration and win-win for visiting galleries, then Edouard Malingue Gallery, more deeply rooted in Hong Kong Island, offers a more adept and ingenious response to the city. Before an intermission, Edouard Malingue Gallery was my last stop before heading south to Wong Chuk Hang, and likely the one where I spent the most time, took the most photos, and was left with the heaviest thoughts—a feeling inextricably linked to my anticipation for Ho Tzu Nyen’s “The Mysterious Lai Teck” series. But more than just the anticipation of experiencing the current exhibition on site, it was compounded by the gallery’s track record: Hong Kong artist Wong Ping’s solo exhibition last year, and solo shows by Zheng Bo and Lau Wai Yin the year before. These high-quality, immersive exhibitions have already established an excellent foundation of audience trust for the gallery.
Ho Tzu Nyen’s current exhibition at the Edouard Malingue Gallery space on See On Street is titled “The Three Realms: Monsters, Opium, Time.” The original formats of the works—darkroom slide projections, lightbox installations—interact with the spatial characteristics of this four-story standalone building, evoking sensory experiences reminiscent of the underworld, the human realm, and a celestial paradise. The Mysterious Lai Teck — 100 Little Devils is a new video installation marking the fifth year of the series’ development. Three parallel, slanted glass panels are inserted within a black box, making viewers feel as if they are witnessing a continuous nightmare scenario. The depicted ghosts and monsters serve both as stark reflections of imperialist specters and projections reimagining real historical figures and events. The third realm, “Time,” utilizes the space’s excellent height, tinted film, and over forty works from the “Timepieces” series to create an ethereal zone containing various forms and philosophies of time.
Speaking of time, it seems a vast and abstract concept, yet recent constant comparisons and reifications have made such monumental themes possible to capture, perceive, and engage with clearly. I experienced a similar “sharpening sensation” when encountering keywords like gender, geography, ethnicity, and ecology. Doubling back slightly to Admiralty and boarding the light green South Island Line, it seems a mere fifteen-minute ride transports one to Hong Kong’s “East London”: Wong Chuk Hang. An industrial feel and experimental nature are common labels for the artistic practices here. Historically a seaside resort and later an industrial frontier for Hong Kong, Wong Chuk Hang retains the hardcore style of its architecture and roads, while its relatively relaxed overall environment accommodates and enhances many creative and exhibition practices directly engaged with global narratives.
Blindspot Gallery divides its space in two, presenting Chen Wei’s solo exhibition “The Silent Breath” on one side, and Sin Wai Kin’s self-imaging experiment, “The Time of Our Lives,” on the other. In my view, Sin Wai Kin is a typical Hong Kong native with a foreign background. As a queer artist, their visual language and conceptual stances on issues like gender carry the strong influence of American sitcoms and Shakespearean tragedy, while also possessing the introspection and warning tones characteristic of Hong Kong artists. This exhibition features three video works and several makeup removal paper works also displayed at the ABHK booth. The space is segmented by two walls into three relatively independent viewing areas. The two-channel video The Time of Our Lives, created in a format reminiscent of American stand-up comedy theaters, places the audience between two screens representing the stage and the audience, enveloping them into an integrated dramatic wormhole.
The artist shifts between different personas across multiple phases, using a sci-fi-esque narrative structure to quickly build captivating surreal scenarios that, to some extent, blur the lines between reality and fiction, challenging and transcending gender binaries, linear time, and the audience’s preconceived notions of ‘self’ and ‘other.’ What I pondered more was whether Sin’s understanding and hybridization of different cultures could generate alternative responses to the social realities faced by individuals with multiple identities, and whether viewers from different backgrounds could connect with deeper introspective methods through a piece of makeup removal paper valued at over ten thousand RMB—I certainly hope this aperture can widen, for only then can the possibility of ‘rejuvenation’ occur.
3. The Penetrating View: Stones from Other Hills Can Polish This Jade
Returning to Wan Chai, rather than viewing ABHK solely as a trading platform, this year’s on-site experience made me feel Hong Kong more as a mirror—it refracts market strategies, reflects hidden social sentiments, and even prompts individuals to re-examine their own positions and perceptions. Artists from the South, artists discussing the South, and artists choosing to move south, mostly engage with geo-ecology and bodily introspection. But after the initial surprise, what then? It seems that after the questions, a multitude of issues remain unresolved. Western galleries, for instance, Harald St, celebrating its 20th anniversary in London this year, presented a solo project by artist Poppy Jones. Her suede-like paintings blurring the boundaries between photography and painting only allow for a ‘like it, buy it’ conditioned reflex, with prices ranging from 100,000 to 200,000 RMB also reflecting the positioning and imagination many commercial galleries currently hold for the Chinese market.
Western galleries that remain steadfast in Hong Kong, such as David Zwirner and White Cube, reflect another type of consideration, treating ABHK as one of their top three most important art fairs of the year. In their vast booths on the first floor of the convention center, they presented a comprehensive ‘family portrait’ spanning East and West with widely varying price points. The list included ‘big names’ long beloved by Asian collectors, alongside works by Chinese artists such as Zhou Li and Shao Fan.
During a global market adjustment period, this art fair, seen as Hong Kong’s bid to reclaim its ‘Asian throne,’ performed decently from any perspective this year; it certainly didn’t ‘drop the ball.’ Rather, the new faces appearing in gallery booths, the Discoveries sector, film screenings, and conversations still practically attest to its high watermark. This inevitably brings to mind the concurrent, vigorously promoted “Art Week Shenzhen” in recent years. The competition and synergy within the Greater Bay Area are now forming an entirely new, integrated ecology. Embracing and propelling the rising and falling new waves is an effective method to ‘repair’ or ‘protect’ independent creativity.
Therefore, if using art market performance to verify certain conjectures, Art Basel Hong Kong and the Sotheby’s evening auction this year remained stable and customary, with mixed fortunes—but the successful ones won’t always be the same few, and neither will the struggling ones. It is precisely this shifting wind that compels people to make seasonal pilgrimages to the harbour, to absorb or critique this year’s programme, at the very least to remain present and interact with the changes. What is the purpose of heading south each year? Simply put, it’s because Hong Kong’s multifaceted thrust always serves to sharpen, provoke reflection, and maintain a critical vigilance. Studying art is never just about attending an art fair. Yet, a day-long marathon can suffice as a starting gesture into the world of art; just as learning to swim requires first getting into the pool to truly feel the water’s temperature and pressure. But merely soaking in the water without moving your legs, swinging your arms, or practicing breathing techniques is, of course, useless.
*Originally published on OUI ART (04-03-2025), as a special feature of Art Basel Hong Kong 2025.
Yuting (Roxy) TANG 