In the run-up to the 2026 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, work by three artists can be found on billboards across the city, and in print and online advertising. From Bi Rongrong’s focus on urban landscapes, weaving, and pattern to Chan Wai Lap’s fascination with swimming pools and Tala Madani’s interrogation of gender, the works are testament to contemporary art’s multiplicity and dynamism.

Here is a closer look at the three works behind the campaign, each one paired with a call to the imagination, ‘Art is…’.

Bi Rongrong: Art is possibilities

Shanghai-based Bi Rongrong sees the world as a woven structure, integrating ornamental patterns of the architecture, cultural traditions, and natural forms she has witnessed in the cities she visits, into textiles, paintings, animations, and immersive installations. Trained in traditional Chinese painting, Bi deconstructs age-old forms of painting and textiles, offering new interpretations of what we think of as distinctly urban or natural environments.

In Stitched Urban Skin (2022) she explores the connection between nature and the city. This complex artwork ‘stitches’ together three layers of two-dimensional sheets: specially treated metal, an animated LED light sheet, and Perspex embedded with traditional Chinese crochet and embroidery. Hanging from the ceiling in three separate layers, its shifting LED animation is inspired by architectural shapes that have struck the artist on her travels. Meanwhile, the blend of organic and geometric forms, hard industrial materials and soft textiles, suggests modern high-rises, tree foliage, and roots. Not visible in the campaign is the sound piece that forms part of this dynamic sculpture that can be experienced in person on the show floor.

Chan Wai Lap: Art is connection

Inspired by his personal experience, memories, and everyday happenings, Hong Kong native Chan Wai Lap’s paintings, drawings, books, and installations often portray serious issues with a sense of humor, exploring the tension between public and private, self and other. He is particularly fascinated by how public swimming pools straddle these spheres, tracing a city’s untold stories and social rules in their construction.

Contrary to its title, the drawing You come to me on a summer breeze – Budapest 3 (2024–2025) was actually created after a winter visit to the historic Gellért Thermal Bath in Budapest, Hungary. With the pool empty of water and people at the time, Chan could count the number of tiles and observe their various sizes, which he meticulously recreated back in his studio. Chan’s lush blue work is a study in presence and absence, inevitably calling to mind the past and future swimmers who animate the vanished waters.

Tala Madani: Art is levitation

The work of Tehran-born, Los Angeles-based artist Tala Madani is known for its satirical verve and cartoonish energy, reminiscent of the political satire and caricature of the Iranian magazine Gol Agha, and the beaten-up, run-over animals of the American cartoon franchise, Looney Tunes. Signature characters from her paintings and animations include balding nude men and gloopy brown ‘shit moms,’ prompting reflections on gender, authority, and who and what gets representation in art.

In the painting Squeegee Men (Hearts) (2024), a tiny male figure dangles from a rope while bearing a squeegee cleaner, apparently using it to draw thoughtless love hearts on a vast dirty window. The comedy is pointed: the abstract bands of smeary pink and orange recall male art historical great Mark Rothko’s color field paintings, while the little man’s methods nod to Gerhard Richter’s famed squeegee technique. The work probes painting’s processes and the ambitions of canonized art through a workaday doodler – vulnerable and out on a limb – while hearts, the most clichéd symbol of deep feeling, float by.