Art from Hong Kong is among some of the most powerful presentations at this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong fair and the city-wide art week. The city’s artists are increasingly emphasising its unique artistic identity and the impact that recent political shifts have had on such a contained place.
“Nearly six years ago, the rest of the world watched aghast as Hong Kong became engulfed in a spectacular conflagration of competing ideologies and values,” says the Hong Kong journalist Enid Tsui. Her new book Art in Hong Kong: Portrait of a City in Flux gives local artists and art history an overdue spotlight and challenges the narrative that the 2020 National Security Law (NSL), which outlawed various acts of dissent, could spell an artistic death knell.
A Piece of Good Water II (Scattered—Integrating) (2017) Courtesy of the artist and Axel Vervoordt Gallery
Tsui highlights the many international institutions coming to Hong Kong this year. “I’m sure they will find the local art scene more relevant than ever. There are things that can no longer be done here since the NSL, however, and outspoken artists can have trouble getting government funding for projects.” She also highlights the current developments in the US and Europe, where “new red lines have also appeared in the art world”, adding: “There’s still a lot that can be done here.”
At the fair, the city is represented by Christopher K. Ho’s brass sculptures in the Encounters sector, as well as Michele Chu’s presentation in Discoveries. Elsewhere, Eaton hotel will show Holok Chen, gallery offerings include Chow Chun Fai’s project at SC Gallery and, at Art Central, Nadim Abbas’s installation develops an unrealised drawing by the architect Andrea Branzi. Around town, the non-profit Hart Haus has group show Put On, which includes Wong Ka Ying, IV Chan, Go Hung, Wu Jiaru, Cucurrucucu, Amy Tong and Mak2. Solo offerings by local artists include So Wing Po at Para Site, Wu Jiaru at Flowers Gallery, Dave Chow at Square Street Gallery and Chan Wai Lap at Exit Gallery. In nearby Shenzhen, Jaffa Lam has her first solo museum exhibition at Sea World Culture and Arts Centre (until 22 June).
Since Art Basel’s launch in Hong Kong in 2013, cultural institutions incorporating local voices have multiplied and now include entities like Tai Kwun, M+, Chat and the Art Development Council’s Artspace, as well as an array of independent spaces like Current Plans, WMA and Foo Tak Building. Local galleries cultivating local artists have also expanded in both number and influence.
A shift came, paradoxically, during the double blows of the NSL and the pandemic, which had the effect of closing Hong Kong off from the world, but artist-run spaces like Wure Area and Yrellag Gallery proliferated. The Covid-19 era led to “a trend that went beyond Hong Kong, where people were looking at and appreciating the cultural sphere they inhabit,” says Aaditya Sathish, a local artist and curator working with Art Central. “This has to partly do with the increased cost of shipping, but also to do with the fact that people were looking at the space around them and wondering how artists [would] respond to it. Similarly, in Hong Kong, we were asked to contend with what was around us—this includes everyone in the ecosystem.” Para Site’s Paid Studio Visits project of virtual tours with financial support for participating artists deepened engagement and the profile of artists such as Vunkwan Tam.
Chan Wai Lap’s Sunshine Game (Blue) (2022) is at Exit Gallery Courtesy Gallery Exit and the artist
Jaffa Lam says: “During Covid, international galleries shifted their focus to Hong Kong artists, allowing me to showcase works that were difficult to present locally.” Lam is the first local artist to have been signed by an international dealer, Belgium’s Axel Vervoordt Gallery. “It wasn’t about choosing whom to collaborate with; it was a mutual chance, and there was no opportunity to choose before. Previously, I couldn’t have imagined such opportunities for Hong Kong artists.”
But the limits remain: no blue-chip gallery represents an artist from Hong Kong. Tsui points out that artists like Chris Huen, Firenze Lai and Stephen Wong have sold works for over HK$1m ($128,000), while the late second-generation Hongkonger Canadian Matthew Wong is now an auction darling, but they remain outliers.
“We often talk about why the prices of Hong Kong artists’ work are so low compared with their mainland counterparts,” says Mimi Chun, who founded Hong Kong gallery Blindspot in 2010. She has seen “a big shift of demographics in the Hong Kong art market” since 2019. The original local core of collectors has either left or are spending more time and money in other cities. Mainland newcomers and visitors have been slow to develop appreciation for Hong Kong artists, too, while international visitors to Art Basel Hong Kong, she says, may visit studios but without much interest in buying.
Studio access has been another hindrance for artists in cramped Hong Kong, which is why less market-oriented digital art is so prominent here. Many artists work from home, but only around half have studios, Chun says.
Jaffa Lam Courtesy the artist
There are now clusters of studios at the Jockey Club Creative Arts Center in Shek Kip Mei, Hart House in Kennedy Town and EJAR Ragora in Shau Kei Wan. Of working in Fo Tan, one of the best-known clusters, Lam says, “I try to collaborate with nearby workshops, like the welding studio downstairs, or organisations that share a similar vision, such as the Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association. I also work with freelancers specialising in sound, mechanics and other fields. Everyone has their own small autonomous space. We are in an era of shared technology, and long-term co-operation has fostered mutual understanding.” Lam describes her work as foldable, stackable and portable, as a response to constrained spaces.
By the standards of most of Asia, female and LGBTQ+ artists are comparatively prominent in Hong Kong, though stronger on the critical than commercial side. “It wasn’t until recently that gender distribution became more balanced in Hong Kong,” Chun says, yet many galleries still overwhelmingly represent men.
In 2018, the Guerrilla Girls came to Hong Kong and drew attention to the overwhelming number of male shows during art week. That year, Tsui surveyed the commercial sector, finding “male solo shows outnumbered female ones by four to one”. While the ensuing years have seen improvement, sometimes even parity, this remains inconsistent. “I can only say that Hong Kong’s art scene is quite queer-friendly,” Tsui says, “and we can exhibit queer art here,” including 2023’s landmark Spectrosynthesis III exhibition in Tai Kwun.
Migration also plays heavily into Hongkonger artists’ identities, with a far-flung multigenerational Cantonese diaspora rooted in the city now expanded by new emigrants from the so-called Great Migration since the NSL and Covid-19. Meanwhile, a new wave of mainlanders is following earlier influxes of Chinese, Indian and Filipino immigrants. “We’ve lost a lot of talent in all sectors of society,” Tsui says. “Fortunately, some do come back regularly and are still active.”
Michele Chu’s Peaches, in July (2025) Courtesy the artist and PHD Group, Hong Kong. Photo by Felix SC Wong.
For Lam, who has seen a third of her friends leave, “‘Hongkonger’ is a concept others have imposed. I wasn’t born here, but after living here for so many years, sometimes I feel like one, at other times I don’t.” She surmises a “similar entanglement” for people born in Hong Kong but now living abroad. “As for who Hong Kong belongs to, it should belong to those who care for it, regardless of where they are.”
