‘In my curatorial practice I’m someone who is interested in learning from art and artists – challenging myself by working with many expanded forms and approaches to contemporary art. To that end, it’s hard to choose only seven artists as I’m always intrigued by the many that I’m fortunate enough to be collaborating with at any time. This is my sixth edition as curator of Encounters, and after three years away from Hong Kong I’ve returned to a dynamic city with lots of new spaces, events, and performances taking place. The present moment is an opportunity to be together again; to nurture connection after the pause of the pandemic. So this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong Encounters is titled ‘This present, moment’, and its incongruous comma is fitting for a time of uncertainty in which the future seems increasingly unpredictable. Encounters is an opportunity to foreground artists who may be new to many audiences, and to present installation-based and sculptural works of significant scale. I want to draw attention to a handful of artists whose work evokes the context of this present moment.
‘Trevor Yeung lives and works in the post-industrial area of Fo Tan, in the New Territories, in a high-rise where they process pork products, so there are always pig carcasses in the passageways. He cultivates plants in the studio and collects gemstones, seashells, and ephemera from geological landscapes and aquaculture – all materials that embody time. In the installation Mr. Cuddles Under the Eave (2021), 13 money trees dangle from a grid suspended from the ceiling, reaching down to a point just high enough for the tallest person to touch. People acquire them for their homes for their auspiciousness, but they’re also familiar in gardens where they are bound and grafted together. It’s a metaphor for precarity and how we hold our center and make space for contact. A sense of how things move through time and how close we are to the things around us is very present in Trevor’s work.
‘Jaffa Lam is an artist’s artist and a teacher with a socially engaged community practice also in Fo Tan, where she has been repurposing discarded materials into large-scale collective sewing projects for more than 20 years. Trolley Party (2023) is a giant canopy of recycled fabric – a sky filled with small apertures that become constellations – anchored to the ground by trolleys of the type used everywhere in Hong Kong to transport all manner of objects. Jaffa has cast them in concrete, covered them in a green fabric skin, and tipped them on their sides to give them a reprieve from hard labor. Visitors will be invited to sit on them and take a moment to pause amid the bustle of the fair. Working with this beautiful history of material and feminist practices, collaborative knowledge, and intergenerational learning, Jaffa has brought together the community to create something exceptional.
‘In 2023 you’ve got to pull a rabbit out of your hat, and David Altmejd’s sculpture The Vector (2022) is a whimsical alter ego that manifests his idea of the hare as prankster and shapeshifter, as well as parasitic transmission and transformation. David’s uncanny assemblages consist of materials that feel familiar but are utterly transposed by chemical processes. They are infused with an inexplicable sense of being funny without quite knowing why. It seems important at this moment of coming back together to allow space for humor and vulnerability.
‘Nabuqi’s poetic and enigmatic installations may be familiar to some audiences from her memorable works in the curated exhibition for the 58th Venice Biennale. In her recent sculptural ensemble Fountain: Night Garden (2020), a classical statue is shrouded and bound in PVC and silk, set before an ethereal black curtain, adjacent to an active fountain. Water is an element that evokes both the present moment and transformation through time – it erodes stone slowly over years or alters landscapes instantly through catastrophic floods. This work was first shown at the Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou during the pandemic, so this is the first opportunity for it to be seen by international audiences.
‘Highlighting the potential for art to speak at more than one frequency, Stanislava Pinchuk’s site-specific installation The Wine Dark Sea (2022-2023) underscores that fact that reality and history are not contained to one version of events. Stanislava connects Homer’s Odyssey, the ultimate migrant’s tale, with passages from redacted documents leaked to the media that contain statements by asylum seekers about their experiences of mandatory detention in Australia. The artist engraved the quotes on marble slabs, a skill she learned in a residency with a master gravestone maker during the pandemic. Her 76-piece installation was made in collaboration with a studio in Turkey just prior to the devastating earthquake.
‘Influential Korean artist Gimhongsok will show Solitude of Silences (2017-2019), originally intended for Encounters 2020, where sculptures standing in for human figures with animal heads are posed on an absurdist theater set. These are portraits of laborers and marginalized workforces in Korea, coupled with stories about their dreams or experiences, both true and fictional. Gimhongsok is a poet, dramaturge, and humorist, and this installation provokes a self-conscious response: how do we see one another; how do we recognize ourselves; and what do we know about what we see?
‘Mella Jaarsma is an important feminist artist who was born in the Netherlands but has lived in Indonesia for around 40 years. Mella makes wearables as collaborative provisional sculptures, reflecting on how we cloak one subjectivity over another. For The Constructor (2008-2023), two workers who specialize in traditional bamboo construction will build a scaffold around Mella’s body, and when the structure is complete, she will climb out and disappear for the day. Every day, another performer will have a structure built around them, until there are five performers and sculptures. In this way the work won’t be complete until the end of the fair. The artist will be present in the installation every day, exploring concepts of labor, persistence, and witnessing. How do we show up in the present? That’s where my idiosyncratic comma comes into its own.’
Discover all Encounters projects here.
Cathryn Drake is a freelance writer and editor who has contributed to Artforum, e-flux Criticism, BBC Travel, and Wall Street Journal among other publications.
Published on March 6, 2023.
Caption for full-bleed image: Installation view of Trevor Yeung’s artwork Mr. Cuddles Under the Eave (2021) at Pinchuk Art Center, Kyiv, for the ‘6th Future Generation Art Prize’ exhibition. Courtesy of artist and Blindspot Gallery.