She might be channelling a death wish into conceptual art - or she's just an absolutely fearless lenswoman. Either way, photographer Ahn Jun has grabbed nervous viewers by the eyeballs with her self-portraits snapped while she is perched precariously on ledges at the top of skyscrapers.

Here she is, dangling her legs above New York City yellow cabs, which are reduced to the size of toy cars by the precipitous drop. Here she is again, running along a ledge in a peacock-blue slip dress - equal parts insouciant sex appeal and tragic accident waiting to happen.

To get her pictures, Ahn wrangles for months to get permission to shoot atop buildings. Once she does, she sets her camera up and triggers it to shoot thousands of high-speed images while she poses. In some shots, Ahn is seen wearing a safety harness, just a hint of anxiety on her pale face. No Photoshop is involved, she has said in interviews. Stunt or no, the Pratt Institute photography graduate is making the world sit up.

Earlier this year, the venerable 159-year-old ( ) named her one of its 20 photographers to watch in 2013. And newspaper in Britain featured her work, prompting netizens' predictable - not to mention punning - debate over whether it is high art.

Ahn is planning a two-person show in Japan this year but Hong Kong can see her work now, at an exhibition at the Mandarin Oriental, part of the Asia Hotel Art Fair Hong Kong which ends today.
 

Natural historians through the ages have painstakingly collected, labelled and displayed crystals and other geological miracles. Debbie Ding, a 28-year-old self-styled "mythopsychogeographer", picks up fragments from construction and excavation sites in the city state, known for the relentless speed with which it replaces old structures with new developments. For her "Ethnographic Fragments From Central Singapore" project, first exhibited at a special emerging artist showcase at Art Stage Singapore 2013 last month, she collected chunks of rock and other debris from Sungei Road, better known as the open-air Thieves' Market, which is earmarked for demolition to make way for a subway station. Then she invited the public to come see, touch and even exchange rocks with her.

Another project involves archiving more than 600 surveyor markers and civil engineering symbols from cities such as Paris, London and Singapore. What saves the proceedings from mere civil society pedantry is the rigour, yet tongue-in-cheek fun that Ding, a literature graduate from the National University of Singapore, imbues them with.

"Since my work is often about archives, I prefer to attribute the works to the name 'Singapore Psychogeographical Society' rather than 'Debbie Ding'. It makes more sense without the ego of an artist's name in the way," she says.

She adds that the society's aim is to encourage people to "reconstruct their own narratives around the various physical traces, histories, and fragmented archives that are often overlooked in a changing urban city".

Ding and fellow Singaporean Zhao Renhui - whose photography and installation works carried the same playful, fictive vibe - were in the running for the regional US$30,000 Sovereign Asian Art Prize, which was awarded to Hong Kong-based artists Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix on Thursday. Ding and Zhao's work is part of a group show, "Engaging Perspectives: New Art From Singapore", curated by Dr Eugene Tan at the new Gillman Barracks art hub until March 31.
 

With political and economic reforms taking place in the country, Myanmar's contemporary art scene looks set to develop further. Collectors might want to get their foot in before price tags for works by top Myanmese artists go stratospheric. And Khin Zaw Latt is one of the better-known.

In 2010, the 33-year-old's painting , of Myanmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi became one of the first of "the Lady" to be approved by censors for public display, after her release from house arrest. The portrait is rendered in red, with a small image of her father and national hero, General Aung San, stamped repeatedly over it.

Khin, a graduate of Yangon's University of Culture who majored in painting, also won the Myanmar Contemporary Art Awards in 2008, and was a finalist in the 2009 Sovereign Asian Art Prize. He is represented locally by Asia Fine Art.

In 2011, he won the first Myanmar National Portrait Awards with a painting of his daughter in a shawl, stamped with woodcuts of old coins. Since then, he has exhibited abroad, in places such as Hong Kong, Thailand, the US and Canada.

Sidney Cowell, managing director of Asia Fine Art, says Khin has deep reserves of raw artistic talent and the desire to search for, and create, new themes and illustrate new subjects.

"His subject matter is always core Myanmar - at the beginning he explored Buddhism images, then went on to his crowd scenes series of people walking to the ferry and is currently painting street children," says Cowell.

The plight of less fortunate young people is something which disturbs the artist, Cowell adds. "He is involved with one of the many orphanages which care for children, who have been left alone due to [cyclone] Nargis or the conflict in the north of Myanmar."
 

Two years ago, when Kartik Sood was 24 and freshly armed with a master of fine arts degree in painting from the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda.

newspaper has named him one of its art "Stars in the Making".

Sood certainly has the art lineage: his grandmother is the renowned artist and printmaker Anupam Sud.

Now 26 and an artist admired in his own right, Sood has gained attention for his sensitive installation works, such as one titled (2008-10), comprising looped videos of death rituals, played on screens erected on coffin-like stands, with perfume bottles below giving off scent.
 

There's no getting away from the art juggernaut that is the mainland, which keeps producing interesting young artists. The 30-year-old Li Liao put an iPad on a pedestal in an exhibition at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing earlier this year.

He worked 45 days in a Shenzhen factory, helping to make the Apple tablets, and then used his wages to buy one. He installed it alongside his uniform, employee badges and a framed copy of his contract. The piece, named comments on the divide between the haves and have-nots.

"I don't have anything to say to them," Li has said about his former employers. "I will never go back to the factory to work." The assembly line's loss, the art world's gain.