If the Guerrilla Girls came to Art Basel Hong Kong (ABHK) 2025, they would have reason to smile from behind their gorilla masks. The American activists who were seen campaigning against sexist bias in the art world at ABHK 2018 would have noted that the visibility of women artists at the fair has risen significantly in the interim. Per the last Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting, works by women artists in the collection of high-net-worth individuals have gone up from 33 percent in 2018 to 44 percent in 2023 - a shift reflected in Hong Kong's annual flagship international art fair.

Ten out of the 22 showcases in its Discoveries sector - solo shows by emerging artists - feature women. Women artists are the force behind some of the fair's most prestigious on-site, large-scale commissions - the BMW Art Car by Julie Mehretu, and installations by Guo Pei and Yin Xiuzhen displayed in the UBS Lounge for instance. Fashion designer Guo has teamed up with guangcai (traditional Chinese art of hand-painted porcelain) master Tan Guanghui to bring about a fusion of ceramic painting and haute couture. Called Glazed Splendour, the piece appears in dialogue with Yin's Wall Instrument No 27, in which runnels of recycled red fabric criss-cross a wall-mounted porcelain base, like cuts on soft flesh.

Beijing-based Yin has a new commission in the UBS Lounge display as well. For Flag Gate UBS, the artist sourced garments worn by UBS employees working in China, cutting up each item into "flags" of equal size, to suggest "equality - regardless of gender, race, identity, status, stance, and attitude".The remnants "were wrapped around golden tubes and rolled into circles, like planets, with a mirror inside to reflect both the world and self". The flags were then sewn together in the style of a patchwork blanket and made to stand perpendicular to a dark blue wall "to represent the vast universe, surrounded with planets of varying sizes crafted from the collected clothes, floating like cosmic bodies".Yin says the installation "serves as an interface for understanding and appreciating the diverse experiences that shape our world, on individual and collective levels".

Young and Asian

The first Mishcon de Reya x ArtTactic - China Art Market Report published on March 20 observes a "heightened demand and increased visibility for women artists "following the pandemic. Jason Karas, managing partner of Karas So LLP, a law firm that partnered the publication, attributes the growth to "a notable increase in women artists featured in both museum and gallery exhibitions around the world post-pandemic".He adds that "this trend reflects a broader shift in the art world toward addressing historical underrepresentation and achieving greater gender equity. As Hong Kong is an international market hub, it is reflecting a broader international trend".

The report also reveals that collectors are looking beyond blue-chip artworks to take a chance on women artists who are relatively new to the field - many of them from Asia. While Yayoi Kusama still claims the lion's share of the market for women artists (62 percent), second place is taken by 1990-born American artist Lucy Bull. The top performing living Chinese artist on the list, in fifth position, is 1978-born, Beijing-based Chen Ke, known for her comic book-style luminous portraits of women.

Karas says that "the interest in younger artists is a likely reflection of more demand from NextGen collectors who are collecting artists from their generation"; whereas the rising stocks of women artists from Asia could be at least partially owed to the trend of museums hosting retrospective shows on women artists from the region. Examples include the Yayoi Kusama show at M+ in 2022-23, and two at London's Tate Modern - Anicka Yi in 2021-22, and Yoko Ono in 2024.

Collectors looking for best-sellers by women artists at ABHK 2025 won't be disappointed. The fair brings its share of Kusamas (Ota Fine Arts), Bulls (David Kordansky); Chens (Perrotin) and Yis (Gladstone Gallery) to Hong Kong.

Queens of infinite space

Christine Berry and Martha Campbell started the Berry Campbell Gallery in New York in 2013. Their mission is to actively seek out and promote works by women artists, especially underrepresented ones. Co-founder Berry says, "Many of the women we've been showing - like Alice Baber, Bernice Bing and Lynne Drexler - are now sought-after artists."

For their ABHK debut this year, the cofounders have put together a selection of abstract paintings in warm colors and with celebratory overtones. They seem to resonate with each other.

Berry agrees that "many of the paintings we are showcasing exude joy with bright and colorful compositions". "All of these artists had different backgrounds with varying personal journeys, but the one thing they all have in common is that they are able to create exactly what they want," she adds. "These women artists are not pressured by patronage or market concerns."

Freeing up headspace is vital to the process of BMW Art Car artist Mehretu, who relies on pure intuition, without any intervention from her brain. When she was given a BMW M Hybrid V8 race car to work on, the Ethiopian American abstract expressionist painter - who was a stranger to the world of formula racing - felt stimulated by the challenge of venturing into the unknown. Using advanced 3D mapping technology and digitally altered photographic layering, the car was turned into a futuristic adaptation of Mehretu's painting Everywhen (2021-23), bearing her signature dark gestural marks.

The artist worked closely with designers, race car drivers and "an aerodynamic physicist who told me where I could place my art and where not". She also took in a car race to get some context. The prepping done, "the car became this whole space of imagination and pushing the limits of what can be possible, a sort of creative lab".

"I wanted the car to have something that felt glitchy so that when it is in motion it feels like a blur and when it comes to a still the information can come together," Mehretu says, pointing out her fondness for the infinite and in-between. "The space of the blur, this unknowing state - questioning where we are - is very interesting to me."

Contact the writer at basu@chinadailyhk.com