Hailing from China to Singapore, these five rule-breakers shaped the avant-garde

Head to the Insights sector to discover Asian voices that blew up artistic traditions

Log in and subscribe to receive Art Basel Stories directly in your inbox.

How do artists approach tradition? While some break away from it, others infuse their cultural heritage with innovative ideas, at times creating entirely new movements or styles. Many of the artists included in Art Basel Hong Kong’s Insights sector – which is dedicated to positions from the Asia-Pacific region – have dealt with this essential question. The radicality of their processes varies in surprising ways, and so do their profiles.
	Indian artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8050/Zarina" target="_blank">Zarina</a> was most&nbsp;influenced by her stay in 1970s Japan. She had left her hometown of Aligarh in 1958, joining her husband in his diplomatic posting. In Japan, the country’s Zen and minimalism encouraged Zarina to free her work from ornament and decoration. What remained were essential shapes and motifs, both abstract and figurative. Visually emancipated from the traditional codes of Indian art, the artist has nevertheless made her cultural roots the central theme of her oeuvre. Often using a word from her native tongue, Urdu, as a departure point, she has been articulating her austere practice around the idea of home in all its visceral depth. Yearning and absence are addressed in her stripped-down pieces, presented at the show by New Delhi's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2556/Gallery-Espace" target="_blank">Gallery Espace</a>.

<div>Strongly associated with Singaporean art,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.asiaartcenter.org/asia/portfolio/cheong-soo-pieng/?lang=en" target="_blank">Cheong Soo Pieng</a> was almost 30 years old when he settled in the city-state. Born in the coastal Chinese city of Xiamen, Cheong spent years in Shanghai and only moved to Singapore in 1946. Travels in South-East Asia led him to embrace a vibrant and effortless technique, effectively co-establishing the Nanyang Style, in which South East Asia’s rich blend of cultures is celebrated. Cheong later introduced Cubist elements in his work and finally turned to abstraction, ‘ceaselessly experimenting and traversing an impressive breadth of styles and mediums with ease’, says a representative of Taipei’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2191/Asia-Art-Center" target="_blank">Asia Art Center</a>, who will be showing his work come March. What is most striking here is how, despite his many stylistic developments, Cheong never stopped celebrating the radiance that inspired him. 
 	Beyond any culture’s aesthetic legacies lies its definition of progress; American-Chinese&nbsp;<a href="https://emptygallery.com/artists/tishan-hsu/" target="_blank">Tishan Hsu</a> ventured into these territories with subtle brilliance. In the 1980s and 90s, the painter and sculptor exhibited with New York galleries such as Pat Hearn and American Fine Arts, the epitome of Downtown NYC trendiness. In an anti-careerist move of sorts, he then turned his back on the artworld altogether. Scathing works from that period address the simmering insanity of technological progress, presenting themselves as abstract hybrids, something between flesh and hard drive. Presented at the show by Hong Kong’s&nbsp;<a href="https://emptygallery.com/" target="_blank">Empty Gallery</a>,&nbsp;Hsu looked at these hyper-contemporary preoccupations thirty years ago and ‘has remained out of place until now, when his post-human sense of identity finally syncs up with a new generation of artists’, says the gallery’s founder, Stephen Cheng. </div>

Despite initially working in challenging conditions, painter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11675/Li-Shan" target="_blank">Li Shan</a> has a more meditative approach to the world around her. A self-taught artist, she started her career in 1970s Beijing, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. In this politically tense period, she joined the Wuming Painting Collective, or No Name Group, an underground association of artists that focused on producing bucolic and urban outdoor sceneries, despite the constant risk of arrest. Ever since then, Shan has focused her attention on settings of modest beauty. She has, however, always managed to translate emotional density in her canvases, avoiding blandness or naiveté. Presented by Shanghai’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/8556/Don-Gallery" target="_blank">Don Gallery</a>,&nbsp;Li Shan’s work, which nowadays also depict sceneries beyond her native country, captures moments of contemplation with refined simplicity.&nbsp;The practice of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.tokinowasuremono.com/e/artist-a06-eiq/" target="_blank">Q Ei</a> displays great technical&nbsp;versatility. The late Japanese artist – whose work will be presented by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.tokinowasuremono.com/e/index.html" target="_blank">Toki-no-Wasuremono</a> – is mostly known for his photograms, a technique he called ‘photo-dessins’ (‘photo-drawing’, in French). They were made by applying objects and shapes onto photographic paper, which was then exposed to light. In Q Ei's case, the process resulted in mesmerizing, choreographic compositions. Angular yet fluid, beings collide and unite in a sepia-toned frenzy. ‘When we trace the path of Q Ei’s creation,’ says Shogo Otani, Chief Curator of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, ‘what comes into view is the figure of a profoundly earnest artist, committed to exploring how to capture the world around him in the most real way possible.’

Discover more artists and galleries participating in this year’s Insights sector&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/hong-kong/exhibitors#25469" target="_blank">here </a>.Top image: <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/42667/Q-Ei">Q Ei</a>, Work (detail), 1936. Courtesy of Watanuki Ltd. / Toki-no-Wasuremono, Tokyo.