In pictures: spotlight on Asian artists at Art Basel Hong Kong – The Art Newspaper

The curated sections at art fairs are often a focal point for collectors and curators­—this looks to be the case with Art Basel Hong Kong 2025’s Insights. The latest edition, says Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s director of fairs and exhibition platforms, aims to “shed some light on artists coming from the region in which we are operating”. It will bring together 24 projects focusing on artists from Asia or the Asia Pacific region, with works spanning more than 120 years.

There are five newcomers to the fair this year, and photography is an overarching—though non-exclusive—theme. Here, De Bellis talks us through a selection of highlights from across the section, ranging from a group of deceptive paintings to an ambiguous ode to Hong Kong.

Chen Hsing-Wan

PTT Space (Taipei)

PTT Space’s presentation is the first solo show of the late Taiwanese artist Chen Hsing-Wan’s work at an art fair. Titled Devotions, it brings together a group of mixed-media works and ink paintings (including Going up Smoothly, above) from the 1980s and 1990s, which together reflect the spiritual search the artist embarked upon through her art until her untimely death in 2004. Each piece is “rooted in a rich visual vocabulary that works through abstraction in order to access the sublime”.

Aisha Khalid

Anant Art Gallery
(Hong Kong)

Khalid, who is based in Pakistan and trained as a miniaturist, explores various dualities in her work. In her series I Am and I Am Not (2023), for example, she turns sheets of wasli—handmade paper used to create miniatures over the centuries—into what resembles contemporary notepaper, filling them with colourful, delicately painted gouache motifs referencing hope, violence and mourning.

De Bellis, who describes the presentation as “almost a mini-retrospective”, feels Khalid’s meticulous practice should be celebrated. “We live in a very visually compelling era where we are bombarded by digital images and our phones. I find it very interesting to be going back to a more focused, skill-driven approach.”

Kunié Sugiura and Reina Mikame

Yutaka Kikutake Gallery (Tokyo)

Despite being separated in age by nearly half a century, the Japanese artists Kunié Sugiura and Reina Mikame “share a focus on urban environments and their surroundings” and a keen fascination with visual phenomena such as light.

Sugiura is presenting experimental works made using a combination of acrylic and photographic pigment print on canvas. Works from Mikame’s series Looking at the Line, meanwhile, depict the same location painted over different seasons and times of day. She uses her brushstrokes to “de- and re-construct the various elements” that shape the way we see the world, such as light, colour and line.

Lee Ungno and Park In-Kyung

Galerie Vazieux (Paris)

This power couple were major figures of Korean Modern art and shared many thematic interests, such as the use of language and text as a formal element within painting, and the crossover between Eastern and Western aesthetics. Galerie Vazieux’s presentation will “showcase how these two artists mutually inspired each other”. Highlights include Galets 2 (2024) a monochrome ink-on-hanji-paper work by Park—who turns 100 next year—which recalls both nature and Pointillist painting techniques.

Jungwook Kim

Jason Haam (Seoul)

Jungwook Kim’s esoteric ink-wash paintings are all about connection. In Untitled (2023) a mix of religious figures, stars, birds and other, more mysterious, subjects come together to form a composition which—taken as a whole—bring to mind themes such as the different layers of perception and the relationship between humanity and the rest of the universe. One recurring motif is the “eye, which serves as a conduit for energy, with beams extending from its gaze”.

Birdhead

Flowers Gallery (London, Hong Kong)

The Shanghai-based artist duo Birdhead, comprising Song Tao and Ji Weiyu, have long made city life a focus of their photography-centred practice. Here, they have zoned in on Hong Kong with an installation featuring 124 photographs taken in the city over the past ten years. The merging of figurative and abstract subject matter—from monochrome street scenes to bursting pink flowers—tell a tantalisingly ambiguous story of the region.

“[Their work] offers a commentary on the changes, whether they are urban or nature [related], they have witnessed. I think that it is very important for us as a fair to represent an analysis of the society in which we are [immersed].”

Diena Georgetti

Neon Parc (Melbourne)

At first glance, the two works making up Australian artist Diena Georgetti’s Surgeon’s Playlist (2025) look “very traditional”, resembling abstract Modernist paintings akin to those of Kazimir Malevich or Wassily Kandinsky. In fact, their compositions are based on collages of images drawn from the internet, drafted with the assistance of AI software. The artist then painted them, and their historical-looking ‘frames’, in synthetic polymer paint on canvas, creating an interesting conceptual balance between old and new. “We’re probably going to be surprised when we see [the piece] in person,” says De Bellis.

Nakahira Takuma

Each Modern (Taipei)

The photographer Nakahira Takuma was a founding member of the influential Japanese magazine Provoke, established in 1968, which sought to expand the idea of what photography could be beyond commercial and documentary principles. This presentation highlights Takuma’s interest in allowing his pictures to convey their own message, in turn “erasing himself” from the artistic process. Colour photographs produced later in his career, after he experienced permanent memory loss and the language disorder aphasia, show him finding new ways to explore these ideas.