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Hong Kong Art Week beyond Art Basel, from Art Central to street art and more

HKWalls’ street murals, Central Yards’ edible art and Lee Bul’s M+ retrospective are among the attractions not to be missed

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Greatness, a work by visual and mural artist LeHo, at HKWalls. Photo: Handout
Lee Hill-choi
Art Basel Hong Kong is the catalyst for multiple events across the city every spring. The final stretch of the month brings Art Week – and this year, the calendar beyond the main fair is more compelling than ever. From edible art to landmark retrospectives, street murals to archival treasures, here’s what not to miss.
The Central Yards Edible Art Fair, Hong Kong’s first event of its kind, debuts at the Central Harbourfront Event Space. Photo: Handout
The Central Yards Edible Art Fair, Hong Kong’s first event of its kind, debuts at the Central Harbourfront Event Space. Photo: Handout

HKWalls Street Art Festival

Until March 29

A mural on a truck by Spanish artist Spok Brillor, featured at the HKWalls Street Art Festival. Photo: Handout
A mural on a truck by Spanish artist Spok Brillor, featured at the HKWalls Street Art Festival. Photo: Handout
Now in its 11th edition, HKWalls transforms the Central and Western district into an open-air gallery with murals by international and local artists alongside digital works on LED screens citywide. PMQ serves as the festival hub, with daily programming from noon to 8pm.
Irish guerrilla artist Asbestos is part of the HKWalls line-up for 2026. Photo: Handout
Irish guerrilla artist Asbestos is part of the HKWalls line-up for 2026. Photo: Handout

The 2026 line-up includes Irish guerrilla artist Asbestos, French muralist Theo Haggai with his mandala-encircling figures, Italian botanist-geometer Fabio Petani and Taiwan-based, visual and mural artist LeHo. On the digital side, Czech animator Rakušan and Hong Kong’s own Eggshellsea (Fong Lok Kee) join a roster that also includes generative artist Hyojung Seo and local animation artist Chow Kai.

Central Yards Edible Art Fair

March 26 – April 5

Choc Duck by Angela Yuen. Photo: Handout
Choc Duck by Angela Yuen. Photo: Handout

Hong Kong’s first event of its kind, the Central Yards Edible Art Fair debuts at the Central Harbourfront Event Space with 10 immersive installations, each inspired by a different art movement and paired with a bespoke edible creation. Angela Yuen’s The Magic Makers transforms found objects into a narrative of Hong Kong’s past and future, served alongside a Choc Duck – dark chocolate encasing a marshmallow centre.

Froggy Biscuits is an edible art piece by Frog King. Photo: Handout
Froggy Biscuits is an edible art piece by Frog King. Photo: Handout

Frog King (Kwok Mang-ho) brings his anarchic Frogtopia to the New Ink Movement gallery, complete with savoury Froggy Biscuits. Other pairings include a beeswax-preserved banana for conceptual art, and coconut panna cotta with black sesame caviar for surrealism.

Art Central

Until March 29

Zoie Yung is the curator of Art Central 2026. Photo: Handout
Zoie Yung is the curator of Art Central 2026. Photo: Handout

Now in its 11th edition, Art Central returns to the Central Harbourfront from March 25 to 29, with a creative programme curated by Zoie Yung that probes the effects of digital culture on contemporary life. The centrepiece is a Hong Kong commission by new media artist Kaitlyn Hau: Recursive Feedback Ritual 0.01, a real-time computational sculpture driven by motion capture that transforms the artist’s psychiatric symptoms into cycles of movement and image. The performance programme, Endless Night and Midnight Sun, presents four commissioned works daily in the Central Theatre, while Central Stage spotlights six globally recognised artists, including Indonesian performance art pioneer Arahmaiani, South African painter Esther Mahlangu and Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen.

Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now

Until August 9

The M+ museum is presenting more than 200 works by Lee Bul. Photo: Jelly Tse
The M+ museum is presenting more than 200 works by Lee Bul. Photo: Jelly Tse

The most comprehensive survey of South Korean artist Lee Bul’s practice to ever be presented in Asia opened at M+ this month, running until August 9. Co-organised with Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art (where it drew 105,000 visitors in previous years), the show brings together more than 200 works spanning sculpture, installation and two-dimensional art. It unfolds in three sections: architecturally scaled Mon grand récit installations meditating on failed utopias; the celebrated Cyborg and Anagram series probing gender, technology and the body; and a final section of drawings and maquettes offering a rare glimpse into the artist’s studio practice. M+ Cinema is screening early performances throughout the run.

Live: Hong Kong Art Exhibition

Until May 5

Nineteen artists shaping the city’s contemporary scene come together for this exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, across four themes: Urban Stage, Landscape Reimagined, Virtual Reality and Transformation. Participants include Angela Yuen, Leung Mee-ping, Hung Keung and anothermountainman. In a first for the museum, artists have been invited to create on-site, turning its galleries into open studios. The lower ground-floor wing houses miniature studios revealing each work’s inspiration, complemented by the video series Studio and Beyond.

At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds, Part I

Until June 27

Asia Art Archive (AAA) marks its 25th anniversary with a two-part exhibition built around a deceptively simple question: what were you like at 25? Part I, opening at AAA’s Sheung Wan library, brings together four prominent artists – Ho Tzu Nyen, Tehching Hsieh, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and Zhang Xiaogang – pairing their works with rare archival materials to trace the cultural environments that shaped them in their early years. The show draws on documentary photography, film, television, radio and personal collections, and invites visitors to reflect on their own 25th year alongside these artistic origins.

On March 26, Beijing-based artist Zhang Xiaogang – known for his figurative, surreal explorations of Chinese history and collective memory – delivers the Annual Artist’s Lecture at AAA’s library, reflecting on his archive and relationship to personal history. AAA will also launch Hong Kong Art: A Curator’s History (1987–2004) by Oscar Ho at its Art Basel Hong Kong booth: the first illustrated art historical study of the city covering that period, published by Rizzoli.

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