Art Basel in Hong Kong 2026, March 26

Conversations | On ghosts and monsters

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Guest curated and moderated by Venus Lau 
Royce Ng, Artist, Hong Kong Angela Su, Artist, Penang/Hong Kong 
Moderator: Venus Lau, Director, Museum MACAN Jakarta 

Fear arises in moments of uncertainty. It is at once a sensory response and an affective mechanism shaped by social and cultural structures. Some fears operate across cultures, while others are deeply embedded in specific historical and social contexts. When fear is visualized and narrativized, it often takes the form of specters and monsters within the cultural domain of horror: a cathartic mechanism through which emotions are released, regulated, and reconfigured. This panel brought together artists Angela Su and Royce Ng to examine how monstrosity and spectrality refract the cultural iridescence of fear through image-making and image circulation. 
  
Royce Ng is an artist who is one half of the Hong Kong based collaborative duo Zheng Mahler with anthrozoologist Daisy Bisenieks. Their works examine the relational networks between nature and technology, along with the more-than-human geographies and the environmental architectures they produce. Through digital media, performances, and installations, they create speculative scenarios and immersive, sensory encounters that explore the limits and potentials of their respective disciplines.  
Angela Su is a visual artist whose research-driven practice draws on the history of medical science and alternative belief systems. Her work spans video, hair embroidery, installation, and drawing, and often engages speculative fiction as her creative strategy. Her publications include the body-horror novel Berty (2013) and the science fiction writing project Dark Fluid (2017). Recently, she launched a horror anthology that employs the genre as a mirror of contemporary societal anxieties.  
Venus Lau is the director of Museum MACAN in Jakarta. Prior to this, Lau was the art strategic director for Modern (Meta) Media Group after serving as the artistic director at K11 Art Foundation (KAF). For the latter role, she oversaw the foundation’s artistic programming, including German artist Katharina Grosse’s first solo exhibition in China, ‘Mumbling Mud’. Before joining KAF, Lau was the artistic director of OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen. 

Stage furniture by Porro and B&B Italia, courtesy of Salone del Mobile.Milano

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