As Art Basel Hong Kong opens its 2025 edition this week, the region’s art market looks fragile amid China’s economic woes, stringent laws against subversion and the threat of increased tariffs from the US. But local gallerists, advisers and collectors urge a more nuanced look at a city in transition.
A significant international market hub since Art Basel Hong Kong’s predecessor ArtHK launched in 2008, Hong Kong’s auction sales fell 27.5 per cent last year, according to ArtTactic. The region — an important gateway to art buyers in mainland China — has felt the effects of the country’s property crisis, exacerbated by the default of Evergrande Group in 2021, and an accompanying stock market plunge (though the latter has improved since the start of this year.)
At the same time, China’s expanded National Security Law (NSL), which criminalises transgressions including art deemed offensive, is now in force in Hong Kong and filtering into the freedoms of its cultural communities. The law was created in response to the mass pro-democracy protests that rocked the city in 2019. In recent years, several artists including the activist and filmmaker Kacey Wong, have left town.
“Hong Kong is a paradox just now,” says Lars Nittve, former executive director of Hong Kong’s M+ Museum. “It’s sad that some artists have left the scene, but it still has the energy that it had before the protests and Covid, just maybe in different places.”
Others say that the introduction of the NSL and the coinciding impact of a crippling (and ineffective) “zero-Covid” policy during the pandemic have spurred a reinvention of art into something more socially engaged. “Historically, Hong Kong artists are rarely overtly political . . . but the protest movements of the 21st century, aided by social media, churned out seas of protest art,” writes Enid Tsui in her new book, Art in Hong Kong: Portrait of a City in Flux. She goes on to find that “contemporary art provided an important space for recent traumas to be processed and for a shattered community to be rebuilt”.
The phenomenon has resulted in new project spaces and more experimental outfits in a city that was previously in thrall to its big-money auction and international gallery scene. These include Current Plans, a non-profit founded by the curator Eunice Tsang, and PHD Group, a gallery founded by married couple Willem Molesworth and Ysabelle Cheung to give more visibility to marginalised artists. Molesworth and Cheung are also co-founders of Supper Club, a fringe art fair that runs its second edition this month.
Gallerists are publicly pragmatic about the impact of the NSL, which has been applied in some instances retroactively, with most saying there is little impact on their day-to-day business or programming, though there is an acknowledged amount of self-censorship. Dealers are conscious not to get complacent. “As a private commercial gallery, we haven’t seen any censorship, yet,” says Edouard Malingue, co-founder of Kiang Malingue gallery. He confirms plans to open in New York later in the spring, though says this is mostly because “since Covid, we get fewer visitors from New York and Europe here”.
The latest shadow cast from China is the prospect of tariffs on art in the ongoing frayed trade relations with the US. Unlike mainland China, Hong Kong hasn’t had VAT on art sales, local or imported, alongside its business-friendly tax regime. “We are not affected so far, though we are constantly reminded by our shippers to pay attention and keep a close eye on it. Things are still evolving very quickly and constantly,” said Mimi Chun, founder of Blindspot Gallery, on a panel organised by the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA) last month. Henrietta Tsui-Leung, founder of Ora-Ora, finds that the uncertainty around the US election did more damage than the outcome. “The second half of last year was probably one of the hardest moments for me, so now we are seeing a better quarter,” she says.
There’s been a gradual shift in programming at the big-name international galleries that have opened outposts in Hong Kong in the past 10 years. “The blue-chips are reaching out to us more for local artists to include in their group shows,” Malingue says, citing the cinematic Wong Ping and haunting painter Brook Hsu as increasingly in demand. The length of exhibitions is increasing too, reducing the financial pressure on galleries that might need to ship in works from outside Asia. Gallerist Ben Brown says he has reduced the number of his shows in Hong Kong from about five to three a year.
The auction houses, meanwhile, have doubled down in Hong Kong, with Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips now in new buildings. They arguably need to work harder than expected to justify the costs. “Life has evolved,” says Hong Kong art adviser Patti Wong, who was previously international chair of Sotheby’s. “You don’t want every auction or every Art Basel Hong Kong to look the same, you need to take a risk. If you have the same artists that sold well last time, the only thing that you guarantee is that you have one fewer bidder.”
This chimes with what Blindspot’s Chun describes as a new type of collector, emerging from an expanding and younger middle class, including in China. Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong, identifies appetite from second- and third-tier cities, including leafy Suzhou in Jiangsu province, where a new contemporary art museum is set to open this year. “The next generation is more empowered now, and they’re not just in the land or property sectors,” she says, noting the growth of technology companies in the Greater Bay Area and beyond. These collectors are much more engaged, she says. “They’re not sitting behind their phones and bidding.”
Technological advances will be felt at this year’s fair, including via its new partner NetDragon, a Chinese gaming company that is keen to find artists to license, Siyang-Le says, and that will have a display in the VIP Collector’s Lounge. The Encounters section for large-scale art has an aisle dedicated to digital art, including a pop-up store by Tokyo-based artist Lu Yang that will sell work made by a digital avatar. Ora-Ora brings an installation by Henry Chu that transforms data from the cryptocurrency market into generative cello music. Composed by Lewis Chung, the music begins and ends with the notes F and G, to represent “Fear” and “Greed”. “We’ve met so many people in their 20s because of our digital art,” Ora-Ora’s Tsui-Leung says.
Siyang-Le describes Art Basel Hong Kong’s core role as catering to audiences beyond the local new wealth. “It’s not just a Hong Kong thing,” she says. “People come from all over and do a comprehensive trip, sometimes taking in Japan or Korea, and galleries around Asia coincide their events around Art Basel Hong Kong. That’s what we’re working towards.” Ben Brown describes such efforts as effective. “The economy is strong in a lot of places other than China,” he says. “At Art Basel Hong Kong I tend to sell one or two works to, say, Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand or the Philippines.”
Meanwhile, though the macro dynamics are gloomy, the general view is that the ever-cyclical, wider art market could return to health in the coming years. In the meantime, the growing cultural ecosystem in Hong Kong and the wider Greater Bay Area gives some hope to its community. “It’s easy to say the economy is bad and things have changed,” says Dee Poon, a collector and businesswoman who sits on the boards of M+ and the Asia Art Archive. But “Hong Kong is alive: there’s something happening at any time and at every turn.”
March 26-30, artbasel.com
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