Meet Art Basel Hong Kong’s curators: Alexie Glass-Kantor brings large-scale installations by Daniel Boyd and Haegue Yang, while Li Zhenhua’s film programme includes work by Luka Yuanyuan Yang

Mar 29 , 2024

Once Upon a time, by Lí Wei from Tang Contemporary Art, part of the Encounters sector. Photo: Handout

Alexie Glass-Kantor’s Encounters section includes a Daniel Boyd installation at Pacific Place, a woven three-piece work from Haegue Yang, and ‘drawings’ by Jitish Kallat created with fire, wind, smoke and ink

Showcasing groundbreaking works by established and emerging creators, Li Zhenhua’s film sector includes an External History programme, with work from Luka Yuanyuan Yang, among others

A fair of the magnitude of Art Basel Hong Kong is far more than just galleries exhibiting their artists’ works. The event also offers fair visitors and the wider public a tantalising range of programmes that showcase and investigate art in its many forms and approaches.

Curator Alexie Glass-Kantor has managed Art Basel Hong Kong’s Encounters sector – featuring large-scale projects – for the last seven editions of the show. This year, Encounters stretches through four corridors that divide the two floors of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, covering 100 square metres. Few global fairs of this scale have as many large installations of sculptural and performance works within the scope of the fair, making this year’s Encounters a rarity.

Alexie Glass-Kantor, curator of Art Basel Hong Kong’s Encounters sector. Photo: Handout

“It’s remarkable to be curating large-scale installations in Hong Kong through such an exciting time of transformation and growth in the city and a significant expansion of the market,” said Glass-Kantor. “It’s also been amazing to be able to foreground and work with artists to really look at what artworks are being created, and the shifts and currents in contemporary visual arts and culture through the lens of this particular platform.”

Over the nine years she has been curating Encounters, Glass-Kantor has developed the sector into one with unique personality. This year, 11 of the 16 large-scale projects have been created especially for the fair, the highest ratio since the sector was introduced at the event in 2013.

At the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, visitors take in Art Basel Hong Kong 2024, with the fair back at its pre-pandemic scale this year. Photo: Eugene Lee

“It’s less about existing artworks dropped in and more about working with galleries to commission new works,” explained Glass-Kantor. “Audiences can come here and see something unexpected.”

The sector will showcase a range of artists from a broad spectrum of geographies under this year’s theme of “I am a part of all that I have met”, a line from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”.

Copy of Copy of Copy of Copy, by Mak2 from De Sarthe, part of the Encounters sector. Photo: Handout