Art Basel 2023: The epic public installations you shouldn’t miss around Hong Kong – from Pacific Place’s ancient Egyptian-inspired exhibit to spooky images shimmering across the harbour from M+ Facade
- Large-scale installations in Hong Kong’s public spaces capture the city’s post-pandemic vibrancy, from a show of the Northern Lights to delving into the era of King Tutankhamun
- Art Basel is bringing large-scale sculptures out into the city, while Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s M+ Facade video features disembodied human hands floating through space
For example, a 10-metre installation in Hong Kong’s Pacific Place mall called Gravity, modelled after King Tutankhamun, has understandably been turning heads. Gravity’s unveiling marks the first time Art Basel’s Encounters sector has embarked on an off-site, public-facing project. The piece by Ethiopian-American contemporary artist Awol Erizku offers visitors a chance to step back in time and explore the unexpected, bringing the ancient world into the present day.
Such is the point of the Encounters installations, which has resumed public shows after the pandemic. The section presents large-scale works both at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre base, and in other public spaces across the city.
Gravity underscores the vibrancy of public art in Hong Kong, as artists, collectors, galleries, dealers and art aficionados flock to the city for Art Basel and the myriad events around it.
For Alexie Glass-Kantor, executive director of Artspace, Sydney, and the curator of the Encounters installations, getting a call in late 2022 to put together exhibits that can take years to arrange meant working to a “really fast timeline”. But Glass-Kantor – who curates the section for the sixth time – rose to the challenge.
“Bringing the past into the present is about being together,” she says. “Being in place and yet knowing there is a unique moment of time is an invitation to an Encounter. The present is a gift and holding the present connects us to the past, present and future.”
For Hong Kong residents, this can be a “powerful way to reconnect, show up and be present” and shake off some of the cobwebs of the pandemic, adds Glass-Kantor, whose travels to Hong Kong showed her how people were affected by the pandemic.
“It was not the same city it was and yet it is the same – the noises, the sounds – the vibrancy,” she says. “But if you ask me what’s changed, or what the mood in Hong Kong is, I’d say like King Tut, the boy king, we weren’t there, but we feel like we know the story. Stepping inside the exhibit will reveal books, textiles and bring the question – ‘What is this?’”
