Art Basel in Hong Kong 2026, March 28

Conversations | Who builds the canon? Infrastructure, authorship, and digital culture

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Presented as part of Zero 10 
Sunny Cheung, Curator, Design and Architecture, M+, Hong Kong Emi Kusano, artist, Tokyo Tony Lyu, Director, Right Click Save, Seoul 
Moderator: Eli Scheinman, Curator & Program Lead, Zero 10, Art Basel, digital art strategist, Kingston  

The infrastructure of digital culture is being built in real time – through the platforms that distribute and preserve art, the institutions deciding what to collect, the artists asserting control over the tools and data that shape their practice, and the collectors and publishers documenting what matters. Yet as these systems take shape, a fundamental question remains open: who determines what endures? This panel brought together artist Emi Kusano, the curator of design and architecture at M+, Sunny Cheung, and collector, investor, and Right Click Save director Tony Lyu for a conversation on authorship, ownership, and the forces shaping the next decade’s cultural canon. Moving beyond the hype cycles that have defined digital art’s recent history, the discussion examines who holds the power to shape what lasts: the artist, the institution, the collector, or the code itself. 
 Sunny Cheung is Curator of Design and Architecture at M+. He has a keen interest in cutting-edge digital art and design practices as well as contemporary art. He has worked on a variety of international exhibitions including ‘Values of Design’ (2020) at the V&A Gallery at Design Society in Shenzhen and ‘Beautiful world, where are you?’ at the 10th edition of the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art. Emi Kusano is a multidisciplinary artist born in Tokyo in 1990. Her practice integrates emerging technologies, including AI, to explore nostalgia, pop culture, and collective memory. Her work has been exhibited internationally in over 20 countries at institutions including M+ (Hong Kong), Saatchi Gallery (London), Grand Palais Immersif (Paris), Francisco Carolinum (Linz), and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. In 2025, she was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Tony Lyu is an angel investor focused on technology, consumer, and content industries. He is the publisher and director of Right Click Save, a digital art magazine. He is a patron of LACMA, Serpentine, the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and was a collector-in-residence at Delfina Foundation. Lyu founded Korbit, Korea’s first cryptocurrency exchange, in 2013 and led it through its acquisition in 2017. Eli Scheinman is a digital art strategist and curator, shaping the future of art collecting at the intersection of technology and culture. A community-builder and early-stage operator, he has led initiatives and built companies across Web3 and fine art including PROOF (acquired by Yuga Labs). Today, Scheinman works with collectors and artists to facilitate the acquisition of high-value digital art and to develop new models for artist releases and collector engagement. 

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

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Conversations | Who builds the canon? Infrastructure, authorship, and digital 

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