Ahead of the 2025 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, we spoke to the fair’s director, Angelle Siyang-Le, about this year’s gems, from Asia’s historical greats to fresh offsite collaborations, new directions for collecting – and, not least, the best place to eat noodles.

What’s new for Art Basel Hong Kong in 2025? It sounds like the fair will be expanding.

Angelle Siyang-Le: During what we call the ‘closet years’ of the pandemic we lost our sense of connectivity. Now we are rebuilding and we want to accelerate it, connecting beyond what we used to know as the art world. We’re building bridges with the worlds of the performing arts, fashion, music, architecture, and design. We are growing beyond being an art fair to be at the center of a cultural ecosystem in Asia.

How is Asia’s art ecosystem evolving? Are there regions within Asia that will have a particularly strong presence this year?

Southeast Asia will be quite a highlight. It’s a region of itself and the historical context is extremely complex. There are layers of art histories to dive into. It’s very compact, but it has so many different ethnic groups and languages. We have galleries from Thailand, a country that has an up-and-coming art scene, with the Bangkok Art Biennale, new institutions, and private museums.

Art Basel Hong Kong looks beyond Asia itself, of course. You’ve also got 23 new international galleries this year.

We have a strong roster of African galleries, which includes blank projects from Cape Town in South Africa. LambdaLambdaLambda, which has featured at other Art Basel fairs, is making its Hong Kong debut, and is the first gallery from Kosovo to show here.  

I noticed that the fair’s Kabinett sector, of single-artist and themed displays, is the largest ever this year. What are the benefits of a themed booth for galleries and collectors?

Kabinett is a booth within a booth and you can find these presentations throughout the show. It’s a chance for galleries to highlight an individual artist outside their accepted booth presentation. The target audience is institutions. I also think galleries have noticed that there are more serious younger collectors in Asia now. Galleries know that if they want to create meaningful relationships, they have to be curatorially focused. In terms of displays, I think the connections within the Asian diaspora have surfaced even more significantly since the pandemic. Kim Lim, who is with STPI gallery in Singapore, for example, is a significant historical figure within Asian female artists. She was active in the UK back in the 1960s. Martin Wong, presented by PPOW gallery, New York, is also very interesting – a Chinese American painter whose work addressed queer communities and who has always been familiar to Asian collectors. Silverlens, a gallery that began in Manila and has opened a second space in New York, is bringing James Clar, a Filipino American artist who recently moved to the Philippines.

What do you think this shows about how contemporary art is growing in Asia?

When Art Basel first landed in Hong Kong 12 years ago, there was a learning process of how contemporary art operates in the West. However, post-pandemic, we feel that there is a lot of exchange and the direction has changed, with Asians branching out in the rest of the world and the Asian diaspora coming back to Asia.

You mentioned a younger generation of collectors being more knowledgeable about contemporary art. How does the fair foster those communities?

At the fair itself this year, we have younger vibes and an increasingly dynamic design, with speakeasy-style spaces and noodle bars. We want younger collectors to understand that Art Basel Hong Kong is not only prestigious and serious, but very open-minded and exciting.

The leading Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s Art Basel co-commission for the M+ art museum’s Facade seems like a good example of how expansive the fair is becoming, in that it will reinterpret classic movie representations of Hong Kong and speaks to the city’s place in a broader cultural imaginary.

Exactly. There can be a very fine line between what artists do with moving image and what happens in the film industry. That commission is a way for us to raise awareness. This public art can be seen on the M+ Facade when you are standing on the harbor side of Hong Kong Island. We’re also collaborating with a local institution, Tai Kwun, for an artists’ night, with performance, live installations, and DJs. We have a new cultural partner too – Design Trust, a nonprofit organization that focuses on architecture, heritage, design, and technology.

Finally, what are you most looking forward to?

There’s a lot of anticipation for me about Monster Chetwynd’s project. Her works are complicated to construct, with many performative elements, and are often created in situ. No one could envision what the actual artwork could be in reality. I think over half of the Encounters sector [the fair’s focus on large installations] are premier works made specifically for Hong Kong. We have two days to realize these large-scale installations on our show floor. I’m very excited to see how Para Site [the leading Hong Kong art institution known for fostering up-and-coming curators] has put together our film program, which focuses on Hong Kong artists. We always aim to nurture younger talents, especially those from our own city.