Ahead of the tenth edition of Art Central, curator Aaditya Sathish shares everything you need to know if you’re planning a visit.
Hong Kong’s Art Central celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, and the fair’s programme is bigger than ever. Returning to its iconic harbourfront location, Art Central 2025 will welcome 100 galleries and 500 artists from more than 40 countries.
This year’s fair is curated by Aaditya Sathish, former associate director of Square Street Gallery, who has joined to shape the programme. He describes it as “ripe with transnational voices, each offering a thoughtful perspective on the dynamic world we inhabit.”Highlights include Cinema Central, a new section dedicated to moving-image works. This year’s programme, titled On the Shores of…, will feature works from renowned filmmakers such as Shu Lea Cheang and Kary Kwok.
Additionally, the fair will debut a newly commissioned work, Brazen Rift (After Branzi) (2025) by Hong Kong artist Nadim Abbas, underscoring Art Central’s continued commitment to supporting local talent.
Ahead of the fair, we catch up with curator Aaditya Sathish, who shares insights into the 2025 programme, the Hong Kong artists every visitor should have on their radar, and how to make the most of your visit.
Hello Aaditya! Tell us about your background before joining Art Central as this year’s Curator.
Prior to joining Art Central, I was the Associate Director of Square Street Gallery where I led their exhibitions, programmes, and publications. We worked mostly with emerging and underrepresented artists primarily from Hong Kong but also from across Asia. Of the shows from Square Street Gallery, some of my favourite projects include Kary Kwok: Phantasmagoria, which was the artist’s first exhibition with a commercial gallery in over two decades, and we exhibited never-before-seen black and white nude self-portraits from 1993. I also really loved Wong Ka Ying: Plastic Love who worked through the commodification of love and its expression through forms that are kitsch and glittery. Through this collaboration, Wong and I got to know each other quite well, and I invited her to perform at Art Central this year in the Performance programme where she will unveil a new piece, humorously titled, Hong Kong Art Market Overview, Analysis and Forecast (2025).
Previously, I also organised several independent exhibitions that were usually site-specific manifestations. For instance, I co-curated “A’Fair: This Can’t Go On” with my friend Tiffany Leung, who works at Tai Kwun. The three-day exhibition, located in Causeway Bay, happened in a space under renovation where the artists we invited made several site-specific works. I also organised an exhibition at Eaton, with artist Kary Kwok titled “Return from the Powder Room” which reflected on his unconventional use of drag to create self-portraits in the 1990s.
How are you feeling in the run-up to the Fair?
Extremely happy: I love that I will finally get to experience the projects my colleagues and fellow arts workers have been working on.
What’s your favourite thing about Hong Kong Art Week?
The city feels brim with energy and life, and everyone’s hungry to feel new things!
How would you summarise the Art Central programme for this year in one sentence?
Art Central’s programme is ripe with transnational voices, each offering a thoughtful perspective on the dynamic world we inhabit.
Hong Kong artist Nadim Abbas will debut a large-scale work, A Brazen Rift (After Branzi), at the Fair this year. What’s it been like working on this commission with him? And why is he a good fit for Art Central 2025?
It’s been great working on the commission with him. I love seeing a work of art go from conception to completion and into the public. I am also fascinated by the way artists think, collaborate, and work through issues material and conceptual. We invited him to Art Central this year because we find Abbas’ research into the status of the image to speak to today’s day and age with urgency. It is something that we should all critically be thinking about—when we see an image, what is it that we are actually looking at? What does it represent? Is it one from the past or the present? What is it that the image is actually doing? The other artists in the creative programmes are also thinking through similar questions—though they might differ phenotypically. While he has been working on these questions for years now, I usually only see his finished projects. I feel quite grateful to have seen the commission through from conception to completion!
A new addition, Cinema Central will showcase video and moving-image works throughout the Fair, including works from the Akeroyd Collection. How is the Akeroyd Collection an important part of this programme and to the Fair?
Cinema Central will consist of two parts, one will feature 15 works and is included in the program titled “On the shores of…”. Curated to complement the programme, works from the Akeroyd Collection will be on view from 4pm to 5 pm every day. The works from the Akeroyd collection are thoughtful and socio-culturally important works of art. They are representative of what collecting with discernment looks like. For instance, I remember seeing Li Shuang’s video at the Venice Bienniale in 2022; isn’t it wonderful that the visitors, collectors, and curators that come to the fair will get to experience it right here in Hong Kong?
In Search of the Miraculous is the title of the Performance and Lecture-Performance programme. Can you tell us more about this section?
A lot of the artists I have been drawn to in performance over the last few years have been less gestural and more research-based. I feel like we live in a moment where we have to search for the future by looking into what we already have at hand, and the artists in the programme, through performances and lecture-performances, embody this trait. To give two examples: Based in Guangzhou, Xiaoshi Vivian Vivian Qin has been working on folkore and landscape from Southern China for the last few years, while Charmaine Poh’s lecture- performance reflects on the rhizomatic connections that make up our cybernetic epoch—all the while using a very personal referent as a point of departure.
Any personal highlights of this year’s programme?
While I love all the works from this year’s programme, I am particularly excited to see Soumya Sankar Bose’s Things We Lost Last Night, 2024, an immersive three-channel video work where the artist pieces together the forgotten traces of his mother’s mysterious disappearance in 1969. Of course, I am really looking forward to Nadim Abbas’ A Brazen Rift (After Branzi) (2025)!
Any Hong Kong artists we should be on the lookout for?
I would certainly look out for IV Chan’s Our Birthdays (uncut) (2025) where she works through ideas of femininity in horror films. Hou Lam Tsui & Wong Pak Hang’s Reaching This Point is the Limit (2025) wherein they utilise different technologies to affectively explore their childhood memories is also one to look out for. In the Video Art programme, I would pay attention to Winsome Wong’s The Vault of the Cloven Void (2025) which reflects on ideas of space, time, and the image at large.
For someone visiting the Fair this year, how would you suggest they plan their time and navigate the Fair to get the most out of it?
I recommend looking through the gallery presentations and creative programme, and finding works that resonate! For instance, if I were a visitor and had a whole day to spend at the fair— I would try to catch one or two performances and a couple of the video works and spend time looking at booths with Legend and Photography—two exciting new gallery features that I am looking forward to!
(Hero Image: Charmaine Poh, in the shadow of the cosmic, 2023, lecture-performance, 30’00”. Courtesy of the artist)
