This week, 240 galleries from 42 countries will arrive in Hong Kong for the city’s 12th annual Art Basel. With 23 new exhibitors on this year’s itinerary, the international art fair offers a space for artists, gallerists, collectors, museums, and assorted art lovers alike to experience a week-long immersion of cultural indulgence.

Art Basel turns 55 this year, and in partnership with UBS, is a leader in showcasing modern and contemporary art on the world stage. Each year Basel, Miami, Hong Kong, and Paris see the arts event, where global artists are featured alongside those local to their respective host city. 

Showcases include works by established creators and those still emerging, and this year, Art Basel Hong Kong introduces The MGM Discoveries Art Prize, an inaugural award created with the intention to champion and platform new, budding artists. The winner will be awarded at a ceremony hosted in the MGM lounge, and receive $50,000 cash to share with their gallery along with the chance to exhibit their work in Macau. Artists shortlisted for the award are Shin Min of P21, Kayode Ojo of Sweetwater, and Saju Kunhan of Tarq. 

In addition to presenting art pieces that range in medium, Art Basel brings back its film program in a four-day demonstration entitled In Space, It’s Always Night, curated by Billy Tang and Celia Ho of the independent art center Para Site, one of Hong Kong’s longest-standing art organizations. Free and open to the public, the lineup will see seven screenings that consider themes of human desire and resilience, of technological realities colliding into actuality, and the interconnected fiber of the ecosystem. 

In Space, It’s Always Night opens with Vampires in Space from Isadora Neves Marques, being shown in its feature-length version for the first time. Others include ANG48, The Devil’s Work, Memory Dispute, Good Society and Phantom Sugar. 

Everything is bigger in Encounters–the portion of Art Basel Hong Kong that features large-scale works. Entitled As the World Turns and curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor, this sector includes 18 large installations to be shown on the basis of four concepts: Passage, which sees ideas of cultural durability and communication, Alteration, which considers rebellion in the conceptual and the concrete, Charge, which levels the planes of digital and actual landscapes, and The Return, which mediates on folklore, the cycles of human history, and our metaphysical devotions. 

In her final curation of Encounters, Glass-Kantor pulls together a mix of installations that include colossal paintings (Pacita Abad), brass sculpture (Christopher K. Ho), artworks created by a digital avatar and sold in a pop-up shop (Lu Yang), and more. 

Hong Kong’s cultural establishments both big and small will also be participating in Art Basel programming, from the likes of M+, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1a space and Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre, among several others. As Asia’s biggest art fair, more than half of Art Basel Hong Kong’s exhibiting galleries are from the Asia-Pacific region, continuing to underscore spearheading members of contemporary Asian art–in doing so, Art Basel creates a globalized community that pushes forward the future of contemporary art.

Art Basel Hong Kong will be held at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from March 28 through March 30, with preview days on March 26 and 27.