HIGHLIGHTS FROM ART BASEL HONG KONG 2025
A vibrant crowd of enthusiastic collectors gathered at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre as Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 kicked off its exclusive VIP preview on March 26th. Now in its 12th edition, the fair boasts an impressive lineup of 240 galleries from 42 countries, including 23 first-time exhibitors. If a city’s flagship art fair is a mirror of its creative scene, then Hong Kong is experiencing a surge of young, community-driven collectors shaping its evolving art landscape.
To embrace this fresh, dynamic energy, Art Basel Hong Kong has fine-tuned its programming this year, according to Siyang-Le. Highlights include the lively Artist Night celebration, a collaboration with the city’s Tai Kwun arts complex, as well as an expanded focus on performances, DJs, public installations, and immersive experiences.
Photo courtesy: Art Basel Hong Kong 2025
Let’s dive into our pick for the best booths from Art Basel Hong Kong 2025:
Dastan
Dastan, a Tehran- and Toronto-based gallery, returns to Hong Kong with a compelling group exhibition exploring the human form and its connection to the environment through diverse media and techniques.
Photo courtesy: Dastan
Bita Fayyazi’s 2024 sculpture, Beautiful Creatures (Meandering Through The Poplar’s Roots), transforms found materials into an eerie yet delicate humanoid figure. Directly opposite, Pooya Aryanpour’s striking mirror-and-glass piece from his Fruit of Elysian series (2024) pays homage to women with a luminous, ethereal presence.
The most haunting works come from Reza Aramesh, whose marble sculptures — first exhibited in Venice during last year’s Biennale — confront themes of war, displacement, and loss. Carved from Carrara marble, life-size men’s underwear imprinted with ID numbers and statues inspired by photojournalism bring forgotten victims of conflict into sharp relief. These pieces radiate reverence, beauty, and quiet devastation, urging viewers not to look away.
Photo courtesy: Anat Ebgi
Anat Ebgi
Last month, as Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles helped its artists recover from the January wildfires, Art Basel offered the gallery extra space to showcase more works in Hong Kong. Seizing the opportunity, the gallery quickly organized a Kabinett presentation featuring new paintings by Alec Egan, who lost his home, studio, and 18 months of work to the Palisades Fire. Since then, Egan has returned to the studio, creating pieces that fuse his signature vibrant depictions of domestic life with undertones of loss, resilience, and nostalgia. Now on display at the fair, his dreamlike paintings captivate with smoke-tinged sunsets and floral motifs — symbols of both mourning and celebration — infusing beauty with a subtle sense of unease.
Photo courtesy: Kukje Gallery
Kukje Gallery
A year after Kukje Gallery’s first solo show with 90-year-old Kim Yun Shin, the South Korean powerhouse spotlights the artist once again — this time in Art Basel Hong Kong’s Kabinett section. The stunning showcase features Waves of Joy (2024), a vibrant abstract painting with rhythmic blue and green layers. Alongside it, a collection of smaller wooden sculptures and a rare Brazilian piece from 2002, part of Kim’s ongoing Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One series, add depth to the presentation.
Photo courtesy: Art Basel Hong Kong
Greene Naftali
New York’s Greene Naftali gallery showcases Hong Kong-born, New York-based artist Paul Chan, renowned for his kinetic creations that transform flat images into dynamic, three-dimensional experiences. At the fair, his Tokener Chronos I (2021) brings nylon, human-shaped forms to life with air, making them appear to flail and sway in a wild, animated dance.
Photo courtesy: White Cube
White Cube
British artist and collector Damien Hirst, known for testing the boundaries of fine art and taste with his preserved animal sculptures, presents Inperturbatus (2023) at the fair. This striking piece arranges butterfly wings into precise circles, inviting viewers to ponder: taxidermy or fine art? The answer lies in their perspective — along with the deeper question of where mortality ends and eternity begins.
Photo by Felix SC Wong.
Photo courtesy: Michele Chu and PHD Group, Hong Kong.
Photo by Felix SC Wong.
Photo courtesy: Michele Chu and PHD Group, Hong Kong
Property Holdings Development Group
PHD Group makes its Art Basel Hong Kong debut with Kitchen, a solo showcase of new works by local artist Michele Chu. Rooted in the communal rituals of cooking, gathering, and mourning, Kitchen draws inspiration from Banana Yoshimoto’s 1988 novel and Rirkrit Tiravanija’s use of cooking as art. Chu deepens her exploration of intimacy, memory, and grief, crafting immersive installations that heighten emotional connections through sensory experiences and spatial dynamics.
Photo courtesy: Daniel Correa Mejía and mor charpentier
mor charpentier
Daniel Correa Mejía’s paintings merge raw nudity with dreamlike landscapes, where figures in deep blues and reds revel in moonlit strolls, refreshing baths, and the scent of blooming flowers — when not indulging in earthly pleasures. His vivid works awaken the senses, evoking the caress of a summer breeze, the cool touch of grass, or the hushed serenity of a starlit shore. Tucked within mor charpentier’s booth, this intimate showcase offers a portal to an oneiric escape.
Photo courtesy: Daniel Correa Mejía and mor charpentier
Shrine Empire
Sangita Maity’s work delves into the deep-rooted effects of industrialization on indigenous communities in the mineral-rich Chotanagpur Plateau, spanning Jharkhand, Odisha, and West Bengal. Her research began in Barbil, Odisha — one of India’s largest iron ore mining hubs — where rapid expansion has uprooted native communities that once thrived on sustainable farming and a deep connection with the land. As mining and industrial projects spread, many were displaced, forced into labor-intensive jobs in mines, factories, or large-scale farms, while hydroelectric projects altered river systems, triggering seasonal droughts and floods.
Photo courtesy: Sangita Maity and Shrine Empire
Maity’s art is deeply tied to these disrupted narratives, using materials that bridge industrial and traditional practices. She works with lithographs, serigraphy, and woodcut prints, incorporating elements like wood, brass, terracotta, soil, copper plates, and iron sheets — each chosen for its connection to both indigenous craftsmanship and the exploited natural resources. Her work carries a political charge, addressing the tangled relationships between industrialization, ecology, and cultural displacement.
Photo courtesy: Sangita Maity and Shrine Empire
Text by Shalini Passi
Image Courtesy: Art Basel Hong Kong, Dastan, Anat Ebgi, Kukje Gallery, Paul Chan, Greene Naftali, Damien Hirst, White Cube, Michele Chu, PHD Group, Felix SC Wong, Daniel Correa Mejía, mor charpentier, Shrine Empire, Sangita Maity
Find out more about Art Basel Hong Kong 2025:
