Art Basel returns to Hong Kong this March with 240 galleries and an expanded program, including a reimagined Encounters section and the Asia debut of the digital-focused Zero 10.
Following its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in December, Zero 10’s first Hong Kong outing will feature 14 exhibitors with a program that includes digital animations by DeeKay examining psychological states through the lens of early video games (via a presentation by AOTM); a meeting of AI, sculpture, installation, and traditional ink painting featuring works by Seneca, Qu Leilei, Tim Yip (at Asprey Studio); and a “participatory blockchain -based work” by Robert Alice (at Onkaos).
For this year’s edition, Encounters will be organized by curatorial team led by Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. She will work with curators Isabella Tam, Alia Swastika, and Hirokazu Tokuyama on the section, which will feature 12 large-scale sculptures, installations, and performances designed to “transcend” the conventional gallery booth, according to a release. The curatorial vision draws on the Five Elements, an ancient Chinese cosmological framework in which the universe is structured around space (or ether), water, fire, wind, and earth.
Reflecting this theme, the section will be dispersed throughout the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, where the fair takes place. On view will be a multimedia textile installation landscape by Suki Seokyeong Kang, representing space/ether (presented by Kukje Gallery); a yarn-based installation by Mumbai artist Parag Tandel examining ancestral connections to the sea (at Tarq); glazed ceramics forms by Masaomi Yasunaga, representing fire, (at Lisson Gallery); and Geraldine Javier’s sweeping eco-focused fabric towers recalling earth (at Silverlens). The section extends offsite to Pacific Place’s Park Court, where Christine Sun Kim’s site-specific digital animation A String of Echo Traps (2022–26) will be presented alongside a sound composition.
The Encounters curatorial team led by Mami Kataoka, joined by Isabella Tam, Alia Swastika, and Hirokazu Tokuyama.
Ben Marans Photography Ltd.
Film is also under new curation this year, with influential Hong Kong media artist and curator Ellen Pau, co-founder of Videotage and the founding artistic director of the Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, at the helm. Two films from the program are set for a special screening, followed by a talk with the artists (Venus Lau, director of Jakarta’s Museum MACAN, oversees one full day of the conversation program). Ayoung Kim, fresh off a breakout 2025, will present Al-Mather Plot 1991 (2025), a personal, political, and historical investigation, alongside Dances with Trash (2024) by ikkibawiKrrr, a found-object imagining of post-human life.
For those venturing beyond the convention center, the city’s museums and arts spaces will also be activated. During the fair’s run, M+ will have on view an exhibition exploring Robert Rauschenberg’s connections to Asia, a show dedicated to master composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, a survey of Lee Bul’s work, and, on the museum’s facade, Shahzia Sikander’s animated epic 3 to 12 Nautical Miles.
Art Basel Hong Kong runs from March 27 to 29 this year (with preview days on March 25–26), with 240 galleries from 42 countries and territories slated to participate. The Galleries sector will include 182 of the exhibitors, and over half of the exhibitors operate spaces in the Asia-Pacific region, including 29 that have spaces in Hong Kong.
