Don’t miss these five artists at Art Basel Hong Kong

At Art Basel Hong Kong, there’s enough artistic firepower to make even jaded collectors sit up and pay attention. The numbers don't lie: 240 exhibitors from 42 countries and territories will be on show. More than half hail from Asia-Pacific, proving this isn't just a Western art showcase, but a genuine platform for regional talent.

If nothing else, the fair is bona fide feather in the cap of Hong Kong’s artistic ambitions. As Suhanya Raffel, museum director at M+ points out, ‘With major art fairs like Art Basel playing a central and crucial role in the local art scene, alongside auction houses, galleries and public institutions, the city's cultural landscape has expanded and transformed dramatically over the past ten years.’

This year's edition bursts with immersive large-scale installations and curated presentations. Fourteen were created specifically for the fair, including British artist and Turner Prize-nominee Monster Chetwynd's Lanternfly Ballet which will spill beyond the main venue into Pacific Place, ensuring even luxury mall shoppers can't escape an accidental brush with contemporary art.

But don't mistake Art Basel for just another playground for the ultra-rich. The fair has strategically scattered its DNA across the island with a week-long cultural takeover that includes free public programmes accessible to all. Para Site, a leading Hong Kong independent art institution, is curating seven film screenings featuring 30 artists under the deliciously cryptic title In Space, It's Always Night. For the visually insatiable, collaborations with cultural video channel Nowness Asia and Videotage—one of the region's premier non-profit organisations dedicated to video art—will provide additional cinematic perspectives.

If it’s not already clear, Art Basel and its current four-city constellation in Basel, Miami Beach, Paris, and Hong Kong has transformed its humble 1970s Swiss beginnings into a full-blown cultural phenomenon. In Hong Kong especially, the fair seems to have mastered the art of creative cross-pollination with elegant precision to create an egalitarian art ecosystem where champagne flows freely and Instagram opportunities multiply infinitely.

With hundreds of booths vying for attention and enough visual stimulation to induce art fatigue in even the most seasoned gallery-hopper, we've curated a shortlist of must-see highlights to kick-start your Basel adventure.

All you need to do is juice up your credit card limit.

Ho Tzu Nyen

In a dazzling collision of AI wizardry and cinematic nostalgia, Singaporean artist, Ho Tzu Nyen transforms M+'s facade into a fever dream of Hong Kong's golden screen era. Commissioned by Art Basel and M+, Night Charades remixes the island’s stars and directors into a spectacular mash-up that channels everything from Wong Kar-wai's hyper-romanticism to Wong Jing's fearless farce. It's baroque, dreamlike, and utterly now – a digital séance summoning Hong Kong's celluloid ghosts.

Betty Muffler

Aboriginal healer turned art-world sensation, Betty Muffler channels atomic apocalypse into sublime monochromatic masterpieces. The 81-year-old healer, who came to art late but has been furiously catching up, survived the late 1950s British nuclear tests that decimated her family. Her art transforms trauma into transcendence through Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country), which conjures sophisticated landscapes that whisper of ancestral connections while screaming environmental reckoning – her delicate palette belying the radioactive history pulsing beneath every brushstroke.

Lu Yang

Lu Yang's piece crashes Art Basel with a fake store that's actually a sneaky installation art. The provocateur crams LED walls, flexible screens, digital displays, and collectible blind boxes into a shopping experience where DOKU –Lu's digital mini-me since 2020 – plays artist-turned-entrepreneur. This tech-heavy set-up weaponises retail therapy to mess with art's sacred cows: authorship, value, and who gets to call themselves an artist. It's critique disguised as commerce, complete with comfy sofa for bewildered fairgoers questioning everything they've just purchased.

Christopher K Ho

Christopher K Ho's ensemble piece hijacks American architect John Hejduk's 1950s design exercise involving a nine-square grid and transforms it into sly brass and aluminium trophies. The Hong Kong artist's sculptures – first shown at his 2024 show, I am a 70-Year-Old British Sculptor – pack architectural inside jokes beneath sleek surfaces. Pei Cobb Freed (2023) winks at the Fountain Place building, IM Pei's Dallas landmark, whilst other pieces morph into giraffe necks and tail fins. Displayed on pedestals at deliberately uneven heights, these polished puzzles double as Ho's take on colonial power plays – intellectual heat disguised as metallic eye candy.

Gemma Smith

Gemma Smith's suspended oil canvases turn artistic second-guessing into her signature move. The Australian painter's Shadow Paintings – built through months of ruthless layering and erasing – capture the primal tug-of-war between what she wants and what the paint demands. Each massive panel archives twenty years of Smith's obsession with process, forcing viewers to physically orbit their domineering presence. Every surface holds evidence of creative U-turns and artistic dead ends, like a juicy visual diary that only rewards those willing to spend quality time with its hulking, three-dimensional attitude.

Art Basel Hong Kong will be showing 28-30 March 2025 at Hong Kong’s Convention & Exhibition Centre, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, artbasel.com

Also read: A local's guide to Hong Kong