Art Basel Hong Kong 2026: 7 artists you cannot miss, from Leelee Chan to Bernar Venet

Pakistan-born, New York-based artist Shahzia Sikander’s new animation, 3 to 12 Nautical Miles (2026), commissioned by M+ and Art Basel and presented by UBS, will adorn the M+ Facade until June 21. Created from hand-painted images, it traces entangled histories of empire and maritime power during the 19th century, from Mughal India to Qing China and British trade expansion. Through exquisite motion and symbolism, Sikander examines the interplay of authority, colonial extraction and cultural exchange across oceans. Her luminous visuals and historical research merge into a meditation on the global legacies of trade, power, and artistic resistance.

Best known for transforming the suburban swimming pool into conceptual art, Hong Kong artist Chan Wai Lap explores memory, aspiration and leisure in urban life. Represented by Gallery Exit, Chan presents a new installation for UBS Art Studio: Mimimomo Pool (2026), which draws from a tongue-in-cheek Cantonese expression depicting a slow, sluggish state, inviting visitors to pause and find respite amid the vibrant pace of Art Basel Hong Kong. The piece expands his fascination with repetition and public space. Like his other motif designs, his immersive work invites viewers to physically and emotionally step into the artwork—turning the swimming pool from symbol of recreation into a reflection on collective identity.

Japanese artist Kei Imazu, represented by Anomaly (Tokyo), blends traditional oil painting with digital composition to construct layered visual narratives. Now based in Bandung, Indonesia, Imazu draws from local archives and ecological histories to merge myth with modernity. Her vivid canvases reassemble colonial imagery, industrial transformation and mythological motifs, suggesting cycles of destruction and rebirth. In her recent work, she explores how personal observation and collective history intertwine, both human and environmental. Bridging paint, sculpture and video, Imazu’s practice deftly captures the fluid tension between natural memory and technological interference.

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Hong Kong sculptor Leelee Chan, represented by Capsule Shanghai in collaboration with Klemm’s (Berlin), reconfigures urban debris into poetic constellations of texture and form. Winner of the BMW Art Journey prize in 2020, Chan’s sculptures unite industrial remnants, natural materials and cultural relics to question time, transformation and human progress. Her tactile process turns scrap metal, shells and concrete into relic-like compositions that traverse history and futurity. Through these fragile juxtapositions, Chan explores material empathy and the silent dialogue between the built and natural world—an ode to Hong Kong’s shifting urban fabric.

London-based artist Steph Huang reflects on global economics and cultural exchange through materials that challenge perception. Using hand-forged glass, wax or cast metal, Huang transforms ordinary objects into surreal reflections on capitalism and consumption—think a crushed supermarket trolley, a robotic, fortune-telling pig’s head or pig’s trotters made of candle wax. Her installations reveal the contradictions of handmade craftsmanship in an age of mass production, exploring the intersections of colonial trade, food industry and environmental consequence. Recipient of the Taipei Art Awards (2022) and the Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award (2023), Huang’s minimalist yet charged works bring quiet wit and unsettling beauty to everyday forms.

Shanghai-based artist Bi Rongrong—finalist of the 2025 Sigg Prize at M+—translates architecture and nature into luminous woven structures. Trained in traditional Chinese painting, she deconstructs ornamental patterns, reassembling them into textiles, LEDs and glass compositions. Her Stitched Urban Skin (2022) intertwines industrial metal with embroidery and light to evoke cityscapes transformed by organic motion. Bi’s works blend craft with digital rhythm, balancing hard and soft, urban and natural. Within her layered spaces, Hong Kong’s skyline finds harmony with threads of tradition—visual poetry woven into contemporary light.

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