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Enid Tsui

The long-awaited green shoots of recovery have tentatively poked their heads above ground at this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong.
The first sales were reported within hours of Wednesday’s opening, which was restricted to invited VIPs only.
Mainland Chinese collectors were seen to be buying despite new economic headwinds and uncertainties amid an intensifying trade war with the United States and economic challenges at home.
At the booth of gallery David Zwirner, the Shenzhen-based Corridor Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded by collector Wang Yongli and investor-philanthropist Li Feng, paid US$1.6 million for a three-metre-high (10-foot) oil painting by Belgian painter Michaël Borremans. Titled Bob, it shows a mysterious figure wearing a padded costume looking away from the viewer.

“What is nice is that this painting, which is supposed to be the star piece here [at our booth], was sold to a Shenzhen private foundation,” said David Zwirner, the gallery’s owner.
“Two years ago, it was crickets here. It was very quiet and you could see everyone coming through Covid shell-shocked and there was not much travel. Last year, we sort of did some good business but it was hard work and took all week. Today, I am feeling that people are coming here to buy art.”
Gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac sold Georg Baselitz’s Luise, Lilo, Franz und Johannes (2010) for €1.2 million (US$1.3 million) to a European collector.
“There are more Europeans, who we haven’t seen for a few years. That’s a surprise,” Ropac said. “There are top collectors from Switzerland, Germany and Sweden. I didn’t expect to be selling works to European collectors here - at the beginning of Art Basel Hong Kong [in the mid-2010s] the Europeans were here, but that stopped.
“Also, the European collectors say they are here to buy Asian art, but one of them came and bought a Georg Baselitz instead.”

Art Basel Hong Kong is Asia’s largest contemporary art fair and this year features 240 exhibitors from 42 countries and territories.
Taking place from March 26-30, the fair is a closely watched bellwether of Hong Kong’s strength as an art market, especially since China saw auction sales in modern and contemporary art plunge by a third in 2024 compared with the previous year, falling to the lowest level since 2017, according to a new report by Mishcon de Reya and ArtTactic.
For the first time in the fair’s existence, the major international auction houses are holding their modern and contemporary art auctions during Art Basel week, thus increasing the supply of artworks amid the local market’s still-nascent recovery. How that affects sales at the fair has yet to be seen.

While large galleries are still mainly focused on selling well-established Western names as they fetch the highest prices, some exhibitors at Art Basel Hong Kong are shifting to selling more diverse types of art as tastes change.
Malaysian gallerist Richard Koh said that while Asian collectors of contemporary art were mostly drawn to Western artists in the past decade as that segment of the market exploded, he had noticed more international galleries showing Asian art, some for the first time, as young collectors appear keen to reconnect with their local art scenes.
At this year’s Art Basel, Koh himself is showing a new series of paintings by acclaimed Thai artist Natee Utarit that feature an Asian woman destroying symbols of European cultural superiority.

Nigerian gallery Retro Africa, founded in 2015, is making its second appearance at the fair after 2023. Within hours of the fair opening, it sold a fabric sculpture by Nigerian artist Samuel Nnorom, priced at US$11,300, to a European collector.
The gallery’s founder, Dolly Kola-Balogun, said she had also received many inquires from Asian collectors, and that interest and knowledge about African art had gone up sharply in the last two years in Hong Kong.
She said that while the West had always been the centrepoint for Asia and Africa to connect, that was changing.
“China is now the number-one trading partner of many African states. My thought is that culture is the next frontier of that. It is important for African galleries to come to Asia directly and have a cultural exchange of minds. For the past two-and-a-half years, my priorities have been to attend Asian art fairs.”

Wendy Xu, Asia managing director of White Cube gallery, agreed that demand for Asian art was coming back. The multinational gallery recently began representing Chinese artist Shao Fan, whose works are on show at its booth.
“The slowdown in the Asian and Chinese art market began two years ago,” Xu said. “This is now the third year and we hope that it is now recovering. We are keen to capture growing demand in Asian art and to explore other interesting Asian artists.”
As usual, the public art programme at Art Basel presents an opportunity for visitors to experience the works of artists rarely seen in Hong Kong.
This year, it includes two large installations by Australian indigenous artists Pedro Wonaeamirri and Betty Muffler. Wonaeamirri, a senior cultural leader on the Tiwi Islands, will give a presentation and performance on March 30.
“Hong Kong continues to be the place to meet people from all over the world,” said Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi, president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates.


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International visitors return as Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 gets off to a good start

Crowds of guests and exhibitors attend Art Basel Hong Kong 2025, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, on March 26, 2025. Photo: Eugene Lee

Bob (2025), by Michaël Borremans, was sold for US$1.6 million by David Zwirner. Photo: Courtesy of David Zwirner

An artist with an eye-catching costume stands out from the crowd at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025. Photo: Eugene Lee

Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country) (2024-25), by Betty Muffler, at Art Basel Hong Kong. This installation by the Australian indigenous artist is informed by her experience as a survivor of British nuclear testing at Maralinga in South Australia and was commissioned for the Encounters section of the fair. Photo: Enid Tsui

Guests and exhibitors attend Art Basel Hong Kong 2025. Photo: Eugene Lee

Awareness (2024), by Samuel Nnorom. This fabric work by the Nigerian artist was sold by Retro Africa within hours of Art Basel Hong Kong’s opening to VIP visitors on March 26, 2025. Photo: Enid Tsui

Art Week Shenzhen 2025 best exhibitions and events to visit, including Jaffa Lam show

Doku The Flow, a video installation by Chinese artist Lu Yang, is a highlight of the opening of K11 HACC at K11 Ecoast in Shenzhen, and the video’s first screening in mainland China.

Tourists and locals alike take in a view of Shenzhen’s skyline from Lianhuashan Park. Photo: Erika Na

Installation view of Jaffa Lam’s exhibition “Behind the Blue”. Photo: Courtesy of Jaffa Lam

Echo of Sumer V (2025), by Li Shan, is one of the installations at “Quantum Jumping”. Photo: Courtesy of Li Shan

A video work at “Gnostic Induction, Coupling Interosmosis”, a pop-up art exhibition in Shenzhen curated by artist and writer Wang Zhiyi.

Spider sculptor Louise Bourgeois’ inner world revealed in Hong Kong exhibition

Spider (2000) is one of Louise Bourgeois’ works on show at Hauser & Wirth’s “Louise Bourgeois: Soft Landscape” exhibition, in Central, Hong Kong. Photo: Christopher Burke

Untitled (2004), by Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Christopher Burke

Lips (verso: Sphincter) (1993), by Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Bourgeois in her Brooklyn studio in 1993. Photo: Philipp Hugues Bonan, courtesy of The Easton Foundation

Landscape (2002), by Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Untitled (1993), by Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Lair (1986), by Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Christopher Burke 

Le père et les 3 fils (#3) (2006) – meaning “the father and the three sons” – by Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Timothy Doyon

Spider (2000), by Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Christopher Burke

Is this our dystopian future? Hong Kong artist Michelle Fung’s vision on display

Hong Kong Arctic 1 by Michelle Kuen Suet Fung, on show at Sin Sin Fine Art. Photo: Sin Sin Fine Art

Detail from Polarbyen the Capital of Northlandia, one of the works by Michelle Fung in her exhibition “2084 - The World in Fifty-Nine Years” at Sin Sin Fine Art in Hong Kong. Photo: Sin Sin Fine Art

Michelle Kuen Suet Fung at Sin Sin Fine Art gallery in Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Fung’s “World of 2084” series provides a glimpse of what the future will look like if we continue down a path of unchecked consumption. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Nationwide Plastic School Menu is on show as part of “2084 – The World in Fifty-Nine Years”. Photo: Sin Sin Fine Art

“The Fantastical Map of 2084” is one work by Fung on show. Photo: Sin Sin Fine Art

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International visitors return en masse as galleries voice confidence that the 2025 fair will be a significant improvement over recent years


International visitors return en masse as galleries voice confidence that the 2025 fair will be a significant improvement over recent years.


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