The fair's most Instagrammable offering will feature 12 works, including Gimhongsok's fictitious furries and textile off-cuts by Marion Baruch.

Gimhongsok, 〈Solitude of Silence〉(2017, 2019). Mixed media. Photo courtesy the artist and Art Basel in Hong Kong.

Art Basel in Hong Kong has announced the 12 artists participating in this year's Encounters section, entitled While We Are Here. Nine are from the Asia-Pacific region, including Andrew Luk, who lives and works in Hong Kong.

The majority of the works have been developed especially for the show, including a game of catch performance by Asad Raza, gory canvases by Imran Qureshi's that are in fact composed of miniature floral motifs, and Marion Baruch's Endless Going Trying to Say (2020), which is made of offcuts from Milanese fashion houses.

Marion Baruch, 〈Endless Going Trying To Say〉(2020). Textile offcuts. Courtesy the artist and Art Basel in Hong Kong Photo by Noah Stolz.

One of the more comical works is South Korean artist Gimhongsok's Solitude of Silence (2017, 2019). Human figures wearing cartoonish animal heads are accompanied by empathy-building biographies that describe their usual professions, reasons for participating in the 'performance', and compensation for taking part. Close inspection of the hands, hovering every so slightly off the ground, reveals them to be mannequins, totally fictitious furries.

※ Click to Read the Full Article on OCULA: Fake Furries Feature in Art Basel Hong Kong’s Encounters Section

※ This article was originally published in OCULA(https://ocula.com) on 28 JAN 2020 and reposted under authority of a partnership between KAMS and OCULA.

Sam Gaskin

Executive Editor, China, [Ocula]