7 Shows to See During Hong Kong Art Week 2025

Wing Po So | Para Site | 15 March – 25 May

Hong Kong artist Wing Po So, who was born into a family of practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, delves into the biological and philosophical radicality of the discipline in ‘Take Turns’ at Para Site, curated by Yuanyu Li. Accompanied by So’s writings on the ways in which medicine shops mediate interpersonal exchanges, the show sees the artist exploring the sculptural possibilities of symbiotic mark-making, cellular replication, generative preservation and other organic processes. Deconstructing the traditionally enclosed medicine cabinet, she transforms it into an open structure that allows for energy exchanges and flows in multiple directions – suggesting a shifting system without formal boundaries.

Raqs Media Collective | Hanart TZ Gallery | 15 March – 3 May 2025

Raqs Media Collective – a New Delhi-based collective founded in 1992, consisting of Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Jeebesh Bagchi – is known for philosophical and art historical interrogations that span video, performance, installation and text. The group’s debut Hong Kong show at Hanart TZ Gallery, ‘Wayfaring Ways to Be’, features more than sixty mixed media and multimedia works. Asking how encounters with AI affect what we think of as ‘human’, the show plays with archetypes as it complicates a familiar binary.

Maeve Brennan | Tai Kwun Contemporary | 21 March – 8 June

London-based artist and filmmaker Maeve Brennan’s approach is both poetic and forensic. Sometimes collaborating with Greek archaeologist Christos Tsirogiannis, she turns her lens not only on archaeological sites and beautiful relics, but also on the webs of theft, trafficking, conservation and museumification in which cultural heritage is entangled. Curated by Tiffany Leung as part of Tai Kwun Contemporary’s ‘Breakthrough’ series, ‘Records’ is Brennan’s first solo exhibition in Asia; it features sculptures and video works including Siticulosa (2025), a new, far-reaching film that revolves around caves in Puglia, Italy.

Richard Hawkins | Empty Gallery | 23 March – 24 May

Empty Gallery will present the first solo exhibition in Asia devoted to Los Angeles-based artist Richard Hawkins. With an underpinning paradigm of collaging, Hawkins blends high and low in both the materials he uses and the references he cites, displaying a playful mix-match of disparate material cultures and critical positions. Moving away from rigid models of identity politics, he embraces cultural hybridity while melding his own artistic persona with that of queer art historical icons. Among the works in this exhibition are homages to Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata’s scrapbooks, and a suite of video works that revolve around canonical Western artists such as Pablo Picasso, Hans Bellmer and Francis Bacon.

Sasaoka Yuriko | PHD Group | 22 March – 24 May 2025

Osaka-born artist Sasaoka Yuriko examines the involvement of animals in historical projects that serve human ambition, often in the arenas of political and technological advancement: from Wojtek – the orphaned brown bear who was adopted by Polish troops and adopted human habits – to Laika, the stray dog that Soviet scientists sent into outer space on a test mission before sending humans. Asking how the animals’ labour was accounted for, and posing questions about agency and empathy, Yuriko explores futility, tragedy and absurdity in human and animal destinies through her surreal, beautiful puppets.

Lining Revealed | Centre for Heritage Arts and Textile | 15 March – 13 July

Curated by Wang Weiwei, ‘Lining Revealed – A Journey Through Folk Wisdom and Contemporary Vision’ explores how traditional folk-art forms – ranging from Indonesian weaving to Chinese silkscreen printing – inspire contemporary art. The group show places particular emphasis on textiles, juxtaposing examples of traditional techniques with contemporary pieces that critically reflect on the labour and gender issues associated with the medium. From Güneş Terkol’s storytelling banners stitched with images of feminist protests, to Han Mengyun’s video essay on the collective female labour involved with the production of Dong textiles, the exhibition explores gender dynamics across traditions and geographies. In the context of CHAT, where crafts take centre stage, the show inevitably tests the reciprocity between contemporary art and handicrafts as it puts the two in dialogue.

Ho Tzu Nyen | Kiang Malingue | 20 March – 13 May

On the heels of several notable mid-career exhibitions, Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen will present his major work Night March of Hundred Monsters (2021) alongside two other recent video installations at Kiang Malingue Gallery. Recent years have seen Southeast Asian artists enjoy greatly increasing exposure; Ho pioneered a pathway that connects Singapore to other countries in Southeast Asia and East Asia more broadly, navigating complex geopolitics. His works can seem aligned with a mainstream, state-driven narrative. In a world of stories woven by soft power, can an artist be a double agent?

^{Main image: Maeve Brennan, Siticulosa, 2025, film still. Co-commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary and Aarhus Museum of Ancient Art and Archaeology. With support from Knotenpunkt, Ny Carlsberg Foundation and Danish Arts Foundation. Courtesy: © Maeve Brennan}