Art Basel stages modern and contemporary art fairs annually in Basel, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong. Hong Kong joined the Art Basel family in 2013 and traces twelve decades of 20th and 21st century art through paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, video and editioned works, representing more than 3,000 artists from around the globe. Through a program of discussions and presentations, the show also offers a platform for cross-cultural exchanges among artists, gallerists, curators, collectors and visitors.
Art Basel in Hong Kong 2017, from March 23 to 25 whose Lead Partner is UBS, features 29 new galleries and half of the participating galleries with exhibition spaces in Asia and the Asia Pacific region, making it an unparalleled showcase for art from this region.
In addition, Art Basel is working closely with key cultural organizations across the city, including Asia Art Archive (AAA), the Asia Society, Para/Site Art Space, Spring Workshop and M+, Hong Kong’s new museum for visual culture, offering an associated program of events onsite and throughout the city that takes place during the week of the show.
This year, 242 galleries from 34 countries and territories will participate in eight show sectors:
Galleries – The Galleries sector presents art from 190 of the world’s leading modern and contemporary art galleries, displaying paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, film, video and digital artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Insights – The Insights sector will be dedicated to curatorial projects by 27 galleries, of which eight are completely new to the show. Featuring solo shows, exceptional historical material and strong thematic group exhibitions, this unique sector illustrates Asian art history by presenting the work of important artists from Asia and the Asia Pacific region.
Discoveries – Discoveries gives a platform to emerging contemporary artists, showcasing work by the next generation of talent at an early stage in their career. Galleries exhibit new work created specifically for the show by one or two artists from their gallery program.
Encounters – Dedicated to presenting large-scale sculpture and installation works by leading artists from around the world, Encounters offers the opportunity to see works that transcend the traditional art fair stands, presented in prominent locations throughout the exhibition halls. This year, Encounters will explore the themes of time, space and meaning.
Film – Curated by Li Zhenhua, Director and Founder of Beijing Art Lab, the Film sector presents a program of short and feature-length films by and about artists.
Magazines – Art publications from around the world are on display and contribute presentations to Salon, the afternoon series of lectures and discussions by prominent members of the artworld.
Kabinett – a much-loved sector of Art Basel’s Miami Beach show, will make its Hong Kong debut in March 2017 with 19 projects. Participants will present curated exhibitions in an architecturally delineated space within their booths. The diverse curatorial concepts for the Kabinett sector include thematic group exhibitions, art-historical showcases, and solo shows for rising stars.
Two of Hong Kong’s iconic public trams will be transformed into moving camera obscuras during the show in March. Hong Kong Artist Kingsley Ng’s ‘Twenty-Five Minutes Older’ will create an altered reality, allowing passengers to experience the city in reverse. Capturing images of passing street life, the scenes displayed inside the tram will be accompanied by spoken extracts from Liu Yichang’s stream-of-consciousness novella ‘Tête-bêche’. The project, which is free to the public, will run from March 20 to 28.
M+ will present ‘Ambiguously Yours: Gender in Hong Kong popular culture’. Comprising more than sixty works, this exhibition examines how Hong Kong popular culture has acted as a platform for new, progressive, and even socially subversive ideas about gender. Through select examples from film, fashion, music, photography, and print media, ‘Ambiguously Yours’ explores different representations of gender ambiguity and androgyny from the 1980s to today.
