A Brief Online Exhibition Manual: Spotlighting Two Must-See Shows at Art Basel Hong Kong
By Calla Mitchell
Hong Kong’s annual art week has returned to showcase and celebrate the vibrant cultural scene of Asia’s art epicentre. Under the market-watchers spotlight, this week is crucial for the city to reassert and retain its dominance within the Asian art market. The city boasts a bustling array of galleries, from global Hauser & Wirth to local favourites such as Alison Fine Arts and Pearl Lam Galleries. The week’s festivities will be anchored by Art Basel Hong Kong (26-30 March; 26-27 March – preview days), now in its twelfth edition, bringing together 240 galleries from 42 countries. Whether you’re stuck at university, work, or simply not at Art Basel Hong Kong this week, why not take a glimpse at two of the fair’s incredible shows, treating the below as a virtual exhibition.
FX Harsono, The Light of Spirit, 2025, plastic electric candles, LED bulbs, cast cement, wood. 200 x 174 x 200 cm.
Image courtesy of 10 Chancery Lane Gallery and the Artist.
Curated by Singaporean curator Lola Lenzi, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery’s Beauty Will Save the World features eight Southeast Asian artists who engage with themes of incarceration, war, abuses of power, displacement, and environmental destruction. The exhibition’s title, plucked from the haunting lines of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, serves to suggest that life’s joys, such as the scent of coffee beans or the soft sunshine upon one’s face, can translate into a tool of defence against suffering, a sentiment particularly relevant today in the face of global conflicts and frequent natural disasters.
A particularly attractive installation, FX Harsono’s The Light of Spirit, 2025, takes the form of a mint of electric plastic candles and LED bulbs which are positioned above a cast cement slab. Manifesting the exhibition’s powerful themes, the slab is inscribed with the names of Indonesians of Chinese descent who were massacred in Java from 1947 to 1949.
Functioning as a meditation on memory, loss, and the transcendence of the human spirit beyond death, the faint glow of yellow and red candlelight against the shadowy black backdrop creates an intimate and triumphant image. Visualising the exhibition title, the beauty of candlelight, and the warm atmosphere it produces, continues to burn on and conquer the dark. Here, the dark embodies the horrors of what the Indonesian artist revokes upon the surface of the slab below. The candles cast light upon the words, enabling the viewer to read its content and acknowledge Indonesia’s violent colonial history under Dutch rule.
Wu Jiaru, docile_body_I_ii, 2025, charcoal and oil on linen, 58 x 300 cm.
Image courtesy of Flowers and the Artist.
London- and Hong Kong-based gallery Flowers presents Apollo Center, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Wu Jiaru. The Hong Kong artist creates her paintings through a process of automatic drawing, taking inspiration from a diverse range of influences, including Francis Bacon, Greek mythology, celebrities, and consumer culture. Her artwork, bursting with bright colour and haphazard images, is inspired by the spirit of rebellion against the status quo and calls for an intimate conformation with how the viewer exists within their natural environment.
In Wu’s large-scale mixed-media work, docile_body_I_ii, 2025, the artist invites collectors to destroy her work. Collectors will be able to select a section of the painting, which will then be cut out and framed upon purchase. By having her work torn apart, Wu invites visitors to participate in a boarder critique of artistic ownership.
Composed of frenetic, gestural lines in orange, green, blue, and purple, layered with charcoal sketches of both human and animal faces, the zoomorphic image encourages an additional conversation with the viewer. The viewer is called to confront their biblical status as a steward(ess) of Earth and their relationship with nature. Further, the blurred boundaries of the figural sketches and positive colour palette promotes a harmonious and intimate connection to the natural world.
These artworks are only two of many incredible and ground-breaking works on show at this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong. I encourage you to have a further look.
Bibliography
Rabb, Maxwell. “11 Must-See Shows during Art Basel Hong Kong”. Artsy, March 21, 2025. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-11-must-see-art-basel-hong-kong.