Art Basel Hong Kong 2024: 9 artworks that will draw you in with their diverse medium and rich tactility

At first glance, Mosen Vaziri-Moghaddam’s (b. 1924-2018) artworks seem like paintings, but upon closer inspection a granular quality becomes apparent, revealing that they are in fact made of sand. Best known as a pioneer of Iranian abstract art for his sand “paintings”, the late artist left a rich legacy as a multi-hyphenate creative and  modernist artist, the signficance of which is understated outside Iran. His prolific body of work spanned five decades and a diverse range of materials and media including sand abstractions and geometric, almost cut-out-like sculptures.

Dastan Gallery celebrates what would have been the artist’s 100th birthday this year, with a solo presentation of the late artist’s works at Art Basel’s Insight sector. Works created by Moghaddam towards the end of his life are on display, showcasing his return to working with sand. This period was characterised by the artist’s preference for sand due to its manageability and its ability to evoke a profound connection between the body, the earth, and the art itself.

Marguerite Humeau is known for her biomorphic, seemingly supernatural-inspired, surreal sculptures and The Honey Holder on view at White Cube’s booth is no exception. Made entirely from beeswax, a 150-year-old walnut, handblown glass and raw honey, the sculpture resembles a futuristic landscape or formation that would not be out of place in a sci-fi setting. 

Within this distinct aesthetic, Humeau explores the intrinsic contrast and tension between the organic and unnatural, robots and relics, and science fiction and folklore. She works with researchers in the fields of zoology, biology and palaeontology and uses unusual materials for her art such as aluminium, algae, salt and plastic ocean waste.

The artist first rose to international prominence when her work was exhibited in the 59th Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, The Milk of Dreams.

South Korean artist Haegue Yang’s Contingent Spheres (2020, 2022) is part of Art Basel’s Encounters section which consists of 16 large-scale installations. The artwork is presented by multiple galleries: Kukje Gallery (Seoul, Busan), Kurimanzutto (Mexico City, New York) and Galerie Chantal Crousel (Paris).

Outfitted with fringes, spikes and textured surfaces, this artwork combines two of the artist’s pre-existing anthropomorphic sculptures: The Randing Intermediates-Underbelly Alienage Duo and The Intermediate-Five-Legged Frosty Fecund Imogi. Through this, the artist pays homage to binakol, a Filipino textile motif. In this installation the binakol references both the 1960s Op-art movement and a wave that holds significance for the indigenous people of the Cordilleras, who believe it offers protection against malevolent spirits.

The artist collaborated with a Rattan studio in Manila to create the woven aspects of the works, for which she employed yongmareum, a traditional Korean weaving technique. The full installation includes a third work: Sonic Cosmic Rope - Gold Dodecagon Straight Weave, which alludes to a Korean folktale titled Sister Sun and Brother Moon’s Escape. The sculpture includes a motif common in Yang’s work—metal bells covering thick cords suspended from the ceiling representing a divine connection, and has a sonic component which is regularly activated to create an auditory effect that reverberates through the space.   

Yang is opening a much-anticipated solo exhibition at Hayward gallery London this October. 

Acclaimed Thai artist Pinaree Stanpitak is best known for her breast stupa motifs that reflect the artist’s softer, minimal signature aesthetic and unique brand of feminism. She has showcased them around the world in a myriad of media and forms including sculpture, works on paper, large outdoor metal installations and fabric. This year, the artist is participating in the Kabinett sector of Art Basel with Ames Yavuz gallery, showcasing a collection of smaller sculptures, which come across as a quaint and playful  presentation. Made from glass, paper, needles and metal, the works in the curated collection include two large inverted metal breast stupas. Additionally, on view at the main booth is Big Momma, a sculpture consisting of a Japanese fishing basket the artist found in a flea market in Tokyo. 

It takes Lebanese Australian artist Shireen Taweel roughly six months from conception to execution to create and engrave her intricate copper sculptures, in what she describes as a “slow, repetitive and meditative process”. She uses hand-engraving techniques that she learnt from Turkish artisans to intricately carve out motifs in copper, which are akin to those found in ancient instruments used for celestial navigation purposes. On display at Art Basel is one sculpture that looks like a compass used for orientating one’s location in relation to Mecca, another resembles an astralabe (a sort of star chart or model of visible astral bodies), and a third looks like a transit telescope which measures the distance between stars. “These are my navigational devices for mapping stars and moving through the seas, essentially into space,” the artist says.

Through her work, Taweel explores the observation-based knowledge and legacy of the Arab sciences. “It’s very much about the past and the enquiry of the legacy informed by the Arab sciences but projected into futurism and to allow for a cultural imagination in space activity that incorporates the sacred, art and spirit outside of a western framework,” says Taweel.

A trip to Nepal after the devastating 2015 earthquake inspired Nepalese artist Tsherin Sherpa to collaborate with his home country’s carpet weavers and create rug-like works that feature motifs of skulls, severed human heads and torn deity limbs engulfed in flames. The works on view at Rossi & Rossi’s booth are results of this continuing collaboration which is also borne out of a need to keep this traditional craft alive.  

When he was young, the artist had studied traditional Tibetan thangka (Tibetan Buddhist paintings) under his father who is a renowned thangka painter from Tibet. Sherpa studied computer science in Taiwan before returning to Nepal to collaborate with his father on significant projects including thangka and monastery mural paintings. In the late nineties, Sherpa moved to California where he began to develop his own style which reimagined traditional tantric and Buddhist symbols. He was selected to represent Nepal at the 2022 Venice Biennale, with a solo exhibition Tales of Muted Spirits – Dispersed Threads – Twisted Shangri-La at the country’s inaugural pavilion.

Alongside the exhibited works at the booth, Sherpa has crafted a captivating addition for the Encounters section: Stairway to Heaven (2024), a ten-metre-long textile  sourced from the Himalayan regions, which depicts a spiral of a dragon ascending towards the sky.

After participating at last year’s Art Basel Hong Kong with a solo booth featuring Zimbabwean artist Wallen Maponera, this year SMAC gallery is back not just with the works of Mapondera but with those of Simphiwe Buthelezi and Bonolo Kavula as well. All artists hail from Southern Africa and their works reflect the possibilities and limitations of materials and abstraction in that region, making it necessary to use innovative techniques and materials, often borne from a historical lack of availability and access to typical art materials.  

Buthelezi uses glass beads, reed mats and mirrorwork to create her intricate and tactile tapestries, while Kavula uses ink and acrylic on wood carving reliefs to create a geometric aesthetic with subtle but ridged texture. Mapondera, who represented Zimbabwe at the last Venice Biennale, uses egg crates and calico cloths to create a surface with a shiny, almost perforated surface.

Time and planets collide in Pace gallery’s booth which features a solo presentation of works by Berlin-based Polish artist, Alijca Kwade. Smooth round granite globes are entrenched within eight plastic chairs, next to two additional granite spheres. This pairing of seemingly unnatural and natural materials is set against a cardboard backdrop with brass watch hands tacked on in various formations, evoking a warped sense of time. The arrangement of the eight sculptures recalls the order of the solar system—the sun, the eight planets and Pluto—but it’s all plunged into slight disarray. She works with a diverse range of materials from found objects such as mirrors, rocks and clocks to natural elements such as copper and iron.

Through her work, Kwade investigates and questions universally accepted notions of space, time, science and philosophy. She is best known for her sculptures, particularly large scale public installations that disrupt our understanding of established scientific and philosophical concepts by visually challenging our perception. This is reflected in the works in the booth; the “plastic” chairs are in fact constructed of bronze and have been patinated to resemble plastic.

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