Hong Kong’s much-awaited unofficial Art Week has descended upon us. Over the next few days, art lovers, collectors, curators and artists will flock to Art Central and Art Basel, auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and perhaps make a stop to admire (and Instagram) the fresh murals adorning the walls between Central and Sai Ying Pun, courtesy of local street art festival HKWalls. 

Art Week arrives amidst growing conversations about how women artists are still kept on the margins of both international and local art scenes. According to a report by the South China Morning Post, “women artists have been consistently under-represented in Hong Kong galleries’ exhibitions over the past decade, a period that has seen the city become one of the biggest trading hubs in the world for visual art.”

Research has found that women’s representation in commercial galleries in Hong Kong consists of a mere 6% or 7%. At M+, the highly anticipated museum of visual arts set to open in West Kowloon next year, Hong Kong women artists’ artworks constitute only 2.4% of the collection. But this is a global issue: works by women artists comprise just 3%-5% of major permanent collections in the U.S. and Europe. Aside from being underrepresented, they are also largely undervalued: art by female artists typically sells for 47.6% of the prices that their male counterparts fetch at auctions.

Hong Kong has great female artistic talent – a fact that is often overlooked. Fang Zhaoling (1914-2006), mother of former Hong Kong Chief Secretary and TWF Patron Anson Chan, was a celebrated artist in her own right. The ink master “was one of the most original artists of her era,” says art historian Julia F. Andrews, who curated Zhang’s retrospective exhibition in the last quarter of last year. Her contemporary was Irene Chou (1924-2011), whose paintings – Chinese ink and colour on paper – have been collected by various museums not only in Hong Kong but also in Taipei, Brisbane, Boston and London, and was featured at Art Basel Hong Kong last year.

Among Hong Kong female talent featured at this year’s Art Basel event is Law Yuk-mui, whose solo booth show, “From Whence the Waves Came”, is described as “an alternative map of the city constructed through the stories of migrants from different periods”. Wong Kit-yi’s solo show at a.m. space’s booth, titled “Magic Wands, Batons and DNA Splicers”, meditates on immortality and biotechnology. Other artists, such as Au Hoi Lam, Sarah Lai, Christy Chow and Jaffa Lam, aretaking part in group exhibitions at galleries around the city, while the work of TWF’s own Development Officer (and artist), Riya Chandiramani, is featured in the street art festival HKWalls. 

In addition, the Guerilla Girls, an anonymous collective of female artists who use facts, bold visuals and humor to speak about gender and ethnic bias in the art world, is exhibiting their first installation in East Asia, examining the status of women at Art Basel and in Hong Kong’s art industry. 

The Intelligence Squared debate, titled “Art Is for Pleasure Not Politics”, has a speaker line-up that is an example of gender equality: two women – Chinese artist Lu Yang and Indian artist Nilima Sheikh – and two men – Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Irish artist John Gerrard. 

Enjoy the feast of senses and mind at Art Week, but at the same time, let’s celebrate and support women artists, especially Hong Kong’s own female talent. 

Connect will be taking a break next week and will resume on April 10. Wishing you very happy Easter holidays.