by Jeremy Got | 3-minute read
Published: March 06, 2025 03:00 PM HKT | As seen on www.prestigeonline.com

Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 is set to bring to the city a diverse range of exhibits and collaborations, which year after year have continued to enrich the arts and culture scene of Hong Kong. This year will bring yet another plethora of exchanges of ideas and themes that marry art, modernity, change, and technological advances—bringing them to the forefront of public consciousness.     

Encounters the show sector features large-scale installations through a four-part structure, curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor. This show sector celebrates and brings to the fore rising Asian and Asian-diasporic artists, namely the late Filipino American artist Pacita Abad through her expressive and groundbreaking works of quilted paintings as works that highlight her ambitious exploration of iconographies and techniques from the global South. Another installation includes the paradoxical presentation of Chinese-born, New York-based artist Frank Wang Yefeng’s Desert Garden, inspired by his trip to the Gobi Desert exploring the notions of nomadism and the unified hybrid space of the garden and the desert as one.     

Kabinett is another highlight of the event, a sector for thematic presentation of solo works from the Asia-Pacific and Asian diaspora, that explores the fluidity of artistic mediums in traversing the landscape of the abstract, seen in the gestural ceramics of the late American artist Martin Wong like his work the Dream Fungus and his other works that embody an absurdist corporeality, where form becomes distorted and twisted, creating a canvas for the audience to explore the relationship with their bodies and the ‘Other’, in a quiet revolt against the backdrop of the bustling world beyond the walls of the exhibit.     

The MGM Discoveries Art Prize was especially created for Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 with a cash prize of USD 50,000 for the winner, as a means for helping these budding and rising artists in the pan-Asian global art scene, but also as a celebration of art and the ways it continues to inform on our day to day lives. The initiative underscores how art remains relevant and mirrors the changes we see in society and our relationships with ourselves and the world. The Prize will also bring these art influences to Macau, to further inspire new art and enrich the art scene beyond Hong Kong.     

Conversations is an important discussion section of the event, and it will bring today’s thought leaders to forge new paths for the future of the art world, covering a range of topics including the social implications of artificial intelligence. Two such questions that will be investigated are What are artists learning from tech and AI today?  with Taiwanese American filmmaker and multimedia artist Shu Lea Cheang, and Living traditions: remixing heritage to challenge old stories with artists Shao Fan and Citra Sasmita. Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 is not just any art event, it is an event that unifies art with technology, and the future, in a constantly evolving discourse that we as the observers get to witness and partake in.