Champagne and hors d oeuvres flowed freely in the Collectors Lounge when Shin Min accepted the inaugural MGM Discoveries Award at Art Basel Hong Kong. In her acceptance speech, the Seoul-based artist reminisces: “For years I’ve been an outsider,” she says, “and now I feel I am a real artist.” 

This was the mood of not just Art Basel but the entirety of Hong Kong Art Week, that despite the ongoing uncertainty of our personal and collective fate, art might just save us in the end. Min’s installation with P21 gallery, “Ew! There is hair in the food!!” (2025) won her and her representing gallery $50,000 and an opportunity to present her work in Macau. Her winning presentation is a reflection of her time spent working in the service industry, and considers not just the grueling physical labor but the emotional and mental endurance expected of employees working for low wages. She emphasizes that atop the basic duties of any service job, women are expected to meet certain projected conceptions of femininity, with polite and submissive attitudes.

“Shin” a large sculpture wearing a Starbucks uniform, centers P21’s booth. It’s surrounded by countless smaller sculptures on top of or hiding under cardboard boxes, all drawn with stringy hair, angry eyes, furrowed brows. On the walls are crumpled paper (what once began as the actual packaging for McDonald’s fries) with similarly drawn figures: hair nets, big eyes, disgruntled, exhausted, exasperated figures on the clock. Presenting this work at the art fair isn’t lost on her, as she recognizes the staff of which Art Basel leans on: those in security, cleaning, food and beverage positions, to the art handlers and installers working around the clock to complete this production. 

Shin Min had a huddle of fans in the front row of the awards reception cheering her on while she graciously received the prize from Art Basel Hong Kong Director Angelle Siyang-Le and President and Executive Director of MGM China Holdings Limited, Kenneth Feng. On the importance of the MGM Discoveries award, which is activated in support of emerging artists, Siyang-Le says, “Art Basel values the relationship between the galleries and the artists, and we feel that the gallery's goals and responsibility is to nurture the artist's career.” She continues, “Adding new voices and new perspectives into the art world is important in order to expand people's mindsets and visions and really to kind of continue to transcend what has been, you know–challenge what has been inspired. That is the reason why Discoveries, as the name suggests; it's one of the key essentials of Art Basel's programming.” 

The Discoveries sector isn’t the only way that the art fair is breaking ground for smaller players of the art world, with much of this year’s excitement being around 23 newly participating galleries, some visiting the city for the first time. Embracing rising talent and welcoming them alongside institutionalized, blue chip galleries is an ongoing effort. “We felt that with Hong Kong being like a cultural melting pot, it's important to continue to inject new energies. It will be an introduction between the audience and these new galleries–for example, LambdaLambdaLambda from Kosovo. At the same time,” Siyang-Le considers, “it's for those participants to learn about the Asian and the local contemporary art scenes. Such exchange is also something that Art Basel values the most.”

Siyang-Le is adamant about the fact that Art Basel Hong Kong doesn’t typically set itself out with a theme, but that instead, certain similarities, conversations, and motifs within the art show will work themselves out through the course of the fair. Although Art Basel is, of course, a buying and selling event, the ethos of the fair is rooted in connection, across culture, across borders, and across time. Surely, it’s a privilege to witness–not just to have access to and to see the art but to know the story behind the artist, to understand the context in which a piece is completed, and furthermore, to interact with ideas on a global scale, especially at a time where our news feeds and phones can at times make the world feel like a small, one-dimensional place. 

In her time with Art Basel, Siyang-Le sees the fair serving more than just the art market. “I always believe that art naturally brings hope,” she says, “because you could resonate with a voice that is foreign to you, that shows the level of connection arts could bring to the world, to our society. And by working with the Hong Kong art communities for the past, almost 13 years for me, that really shows that communities [are] essential for contemporary arts scenes development.” In this development, we see Art Basel Hong Kong working alongside the city’s local galleries and museums throughout Hong Kong Art Week, which puts on surrounding activations and cultural events in the same week as Art Basel. Collaborations include Tai Kwun, where this year the fair supported an Artist’s Night of presentation and performance and where attendees came out and stayed to mingle despite the rain. When attracting so many visitors into Hong Kong, Art Basel encourages those to visit the city’s art spaces like Asia Art Collective, which houses some 55,000 records and archives, or Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT), which has transformed one of Hong Kong’s most important, historic spinning factories into an exhibiting space. 

“We value the community spirit, and we learn to bridge collaborations,” says Siyang-Le. “Our business is built upon hundreds and thousands of partnerships between colleagues: from a day-to-day basis, between us and galleries. Obviously, we have brand partnerships as well—such as Louis Vuitton [who showed a Takashi Murakami presentation] and MGM [who is a partner in the aforementioned Discoveries Art Prize]—but at the same time, we have partnerships with institutions. Art is about dialogues, building dialogues, building connections, and therefore, these kinds of collaborations also move our dialogues forward. You know, March in Hong Kong is no longer just about Art Basel,” she reflects. “It is really about Asia's entire eco-art system, and we are just being the connector, the core connectors, bringing people together.” 

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