Art Basel has announced the exhibitors and first highlights for its 2025 show in Hong Kong, offering an invigorating program that connects with the city as well as new and returning audiences.
Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 will feature 242 world-class galleries from 42 countries and territories presenting their finest programs. Key highlights below:
Over half of the galleries hail from the Asia-Pacific, underscoring the fair’s commitment to championing the region’s artistic voices.
An exciting roster of 23 new galleries from India, Australia, Kosovo, Guatemala, Nigeria, South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Greater China region will participate in the show, bringing fresh perspectives and artistic diversity to the fair.
For the first time, the fair will partner with Para Site, Hong Kong’s independent art institution, to steer the curatorial direction of the public Film Program, reflecting Art Basel’s ongoing collaboration with the local art scene.
Dedicated to supporting emerging artists, the inaugural edition of the MGM Discoveries Art Prize will award its first winner in 2025 with a cash prize to be shared between the artist and the gallery presenting them at the show, along with an opportunity to exhibit in Macau.
Co-commissioned by Art Basel and M+, and presented by UBS, the M+ Facade will feature Ho Tzu Nyen’s Night Charades, a reimagination of iconic Hong Kong film scenes through animation.
According to the recently released Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2024, HNWI in Mainland China reported the highest spend on art and antiques in 2023 and the first half of 2024, more than double any other region, which suggests that the strong return to purchasing post-lockdown has been sustained and further bolsters our positive outlook for the coming March.
Angelle Siyang-Le, Director of Art Basel Hong Kong, said:
The impressive line-up of galleries participating in our 2025 Hong Kong edition reinforces the fair’s position as a cultural crossroads and vital anchor in Asia’s ever-growing art scenes. We’re committed to continuing to strengthen our ties with the regional art scene and its rising stars – our collaboration with the leading local non-profit organization Para Site for the public Film Program is a historic first, while the MGM Discoveries Art Prize will honor its inaugural winner during the show next year.
The fair’s core sectors include Galleries, the main sector for established and blue-chip galleries; Discoveries, which spotlights solo projects by emerging artists; and Insights, offering curated projects
from artists across Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.
This year, the Galleries sector will present a rich mix of exhibitors from across the Asia-Pacific, including emerging, mid-size, and blue-chip galleries from Japan, Korea, India, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, and Australia. Notable solo presentations in the Galleries sector include Lawrie Shabibi (Dubai), Rossi & Rossi (Hong Kong), P420 (Bologna) and Ronchini Gallery (London). Additionally, Insights will showcase historic photography presentations from Asia, with contributions from Flowers Gallery (London, Hong Kong), Each Modern (Taipei), Takuro Someya Contemporary Art (Tokyo), Yutaka Kikutake Gallery (Tokyo), and The Drawing Room (Manila). The Discoveries sector will offer an exciting selection of emerging galleries, with participants from diverse locales ranging from Beijing to Pristina.
The show will welcome 23 newcomers across all sectors, with exhibitors from Cape Town, Berlin, and New York joining Galleries, while Insights will feature newcomers from Hong Kong, Noida, and Melbourne. Eight galleries will enter the fair’s main sector from the Greater China Region, as well as India, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Austria, and the United Kingdom, emphasizing Art Basel Hong Kong’s commitment to regional growth.
For the first time, Art Basel’s public Film Program will be curated by the Hong Kong independent art institution, Para Site, demonstrating the fair’s commitment to expanding its partnership with institutions to support the local art ecosystem. The Film Program will feature works by filmmakers from Asia and beyond, offering a global perspective that transcends regional boundaries.
Billy Tang, Executive Director and Curator of Para Site, said:
An important mission of Para Site is to identify and support the visibility of cutting-edge artists working across a variety of disciplines, with a particular focus on the rapidly evolving field of moving image. Moving image today has the power to bridge multi-sensory worlds together and open up new possibilities for artistic expression. We’re incredibly honored to be invited as an organisation, which enables us to draw on the enormous collective talent of our curators, and we look forward to taking a collaborative approach to further activate the program beyond the fair.
The MGM Discoveries Art Prize, a newly established award for Art Basel Hong Kong’s 2025 edition aimed at supporting emerging artists and fostering new talents, will be awarded for the first time in 2025. The winner of the prize, to be announced during Art Basel Hong Kong next March, will be awarded with a cash prize of USD 50,000 to be shared between the artist and their gallery, along with the opportunity for the artist to exhibit their work in Macau, fostering meaningful dialog with the emerging artist community, and participating in an enriching, exclusive art experience.
Co-commissioned by Art Basel and M+ and presented by UBS, Night Charades by Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen will illuminate the M+ Facade with a tribute to Hong Kong’s vibrant film culture. Recomposed by AI and constantly re-edited by an algorithm, the work offers a dynamic re-interpretation of history. It evokes the collective memory of this singular cinematic legacy while generating a new, futuristic vision from it.
Galleries
196 of the world’s top galleries will come together in this sector, showcasing exceptional artworks from
their extensive programs. Exhibitors will present a wide range of works by 20th-century masters,
contemporary blue-chip artists, mid-career practitioners, and emerging talents. Several galleries in this
sector will present compelling solo exhibitions focused on the work of a single artist.
Lawrie Shabibi (Dubai), entering the main sector and presenting vibrant, nature-inspired paintings and sculptures by Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, a key figure in the United Arab Emirates’s avant-garde scene.
Rossi & Rossi (Hong Kong), with Siah Armajani’s ceramics and calligraphy works, as well as his poignant reflection on the personal impact of the 2009 protests in Iran.
P420 (Bologna), offering a retrospective of the late German-Italian artist Irma Blank, highlighting
50 years of interplay between writing and drawing.
Ronchini Gallery (London), featuring works by Katsumi Nakai, fusing Eastern and Western
sensibilities to explore the physicality of the canvas
Eight galleries in this sector will be participating in Art Basel Hong Kong for the first time. They include:
blank projects (Cape Town), presenting a solo installation by Igshaan Adams, featuring large-scale tapestries inspired by Indigenous South African dancers
Bastian Fine Art (Berlin), juxtaposing sculptures by Joseph Beuys and portraits by Andy Warhol, celebrating both artists’ contributions to 20th-century art
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York), with new and historic works by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Mary Lee Bendolph, Louise Despont, Violeta Maya, Quentin James McCaffrey, Lucy Puls, Eleanor Ray, and David Benjamin Sherry
For the full gallery list for Galleries, please visit artbasel.com/hongkong/galleries.
Discoveries
Discoveries spotlights emerging artists and galleries, offering a platform for new artistic perspectives through solo presentations of recent projects. With a total of 22 exhibitors, over half of the participating galleries will be emerging, having been established within the last 10 years.
This year, 10 galleries will make their debut at Art Basel Hong Kong, including:
Mocube (Beijing), with a solo project by Zhu Tian that explores modern narcissism and other contemporary intellectual and cultural crises through performance, video installations, and speculative philosophical texts
Sweetwater, Berlin (Berlin), featuring a solo multimedia project by Kayode Ojo that explores the versatile motif of the necklace, highlighted by a large-scale hanging sculpture made of flutes
Emalin (London), presenting a new installation by Sung Tieu that incorporates Minimalist aesthetics, gas canisters, and historic coins to explore France’s colonial rule over Indochina
Property Holdings Development Group (Hong Kong), with an interactive installation by Michele Chu that mimics a domestic kitchen to explore themes of cooking and mourning
LambdaLambdaLambda (Pristina / Paris), showcasing new hand-woven textile works by Croatian artist Hana Mileti? that explore themes of care, loss, and the history of visible repairs
Park View / Paul Soto (Los Angeles, New York), presenting recent work by Na Mira, in collaboration with the archive of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, that explores memory, ancestry, and her matrilineal shamanic lineage
For the full gallery list for Discoveries visit artbasel.com/hongkong/discoveries.
Insights
Insights will feature 24 curated projects focused on artists from Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, offering a deeper look into an individual artist’s career, a specific theme, or a period in art history from 1900 to the present. This year’s Insights sector will shed a particularly bright light on photography, with many galleries presenting innovative photographic practices from Asia, from the 1970s to the present.
They include:
Flowers Gallery (London, Hong Kong), presenting an immersive multimedia installation by the artist duo Birdhead, reflecting on the rapid societal change in China
Each Modern (Taipei), presenting photographs by Nakahira Takuma, created both before and after the influential leader of the Provoke group was in a coma
Takuro Someya Contemporary Art (Tokyo), showcasing Nobuo Yamanaka’s pinhole photographs alongside a selection of paintings and wall-mounted sculptures by Kenjiro Okazaki
Yutake Kikutake Gallery (Tokyo), featuring mixed-media works by Kunié Sugiura, who explores the fusion of painting and photography, paired with light-filled oil paintings by Reina Mikame
Many participating galleries are new to Art Basel Hong Kong, including local galleries that will make their debut in Insights, spotlighting the work of prominent Hong Kong-based artists. They are:
Anant Art Gallery (Noida), with a comprehensive display of tapestries, prints, and painted polyptychs made over three decades by neo-miniaturist Aisha Khalid
Neon Parc (Melbourne), with a suite of new works by Diena Georgetti, who combines disparate references in her composite paintings
Contemporary by Angela Li (Hong Kong), presenting Yuk-Keung Kurt Chan’s scientific exploration of natural elements like rocks, trees, and water to offer a novel approach to traditional Chinese landscape painting
SC Gallery (Hong Kong), with Chow Chun Fai’s research-driven project, Interview the Interviewer II, which provides a critical lens on socio-political shifts from a Hong Kong perspective
For the full gallery list for Insights, please visit artbasel.com/hongkong/insights
Art|Basel Hong Kong, March 26th – 30th March 2025 HKCEC @artbasel
