Asia Art Weekly News Bulletin – ISSUE 42 Week of 1 December 2025
(1) Eileen Chang exhibition in Hong Kong reveals the woman behind the Chinese literary icon
Photos, letters, manuscripts and even furniture at the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature preserve Chang’s legacy 30 years after her death.
(2) Félix González-Torres exhibition in Hong Kong highlights his ever-changing works
Cuban-American visual artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who died in 1996, created ephemeral artworks that constantly change, echoing life.
(3) Hokusai’s “The Great Wave” Smashes Record, Selling for $2.8 Million USD at Sotheby’s Hong Kong
Sotheby’s Hong Kong achieved a record-breaking, “white-glove result” at its Masterpieces of Asian Art from the Okada Museum of Art Auction.
(4) Chanel and Power Station of Art Unveil Mainland China’s First Public Contemporary Art Library
Located at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art (PSA), Espace Gabrielle Chanel has opened to the public as mainland China’s first public library dedicated to contemporary art.
(1) Eileen Chang exhibition in Hong Kong reveals the woman behind the Chinese literary icon
(Photo Credit: Hong Kong Metropolitan University)
Hong Kong Metropolitan University launched its inaugural exhibition, “Beyond Distance: Half a Lifelong Friendship of Eileen Chang, Stephen Soong and Mae Fong Soong,” featuring 120 items from the 17,000-piece collection donated by the Soong family. The exhibition marks the 30th anniversary of Chang’s death, showcasing unpublished photographs, manuscripts, and personal artifacts that reveal her deep connections to Hong Kong—where she first studied in 1939 and later forged a lifelong friendship with writer-translator Stephen Soong and his wife.
The display highlights Chang’s enduring influence, including a 1995 letter discussing Wong Kar-wai’s interest in adapting her story Eighteen Springs(later filmed by Ann Hui). Correspondence with Stephen Soong reveals collaborative scriptwork, while recreated settings—like the Soongs’ living room, digitally replicated via 3D scanning—immerse visitors in the intellectual milieu where Chang and peers debated literature and art.
HKMU is digitizing the collection for its “Modern Chinese Literature Collection” platform, aligning with efforts to position Hong Kong as a hub for Chinese literary studies. Curator Rebecca Leung emphasizes that Chang’s explorations of tradition versus modernity remain profoundly relevant, ensuring her insights into the human condition continue to transcend time and borders through innovative archival and exhibition practices.
News Source: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts/article/3334720/eileen-chang-exhibition-hong-kong-reveals-woman-behind-chinese-literary-icon
(2) Félix González-Torres exhibition in Hong Kong highlights his ever-changing works
(Photo Credit: SCMP)
Cuban-American visual artist Félix González-Torres, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1996, developed a visionary practice centered on ephemerality and participatory meaning. His “Core Tenets”—preserved by the Félix González-Torres Foundation—provide open-ended guidelines for exhibiting his work, ensuring it evolves through reinterpretation. This philosophy is reflected in his first Hong Kong solo exhibition, Somewhere Better Than This Place / Nowhere Better Than This Place, curated by David Zwirner gallery in accordance with the artist’s instructions.
González-Torres’s most renowned pieces, such as Untitled (Perfect Lovers)—two clocks ticking in sync until they inevitably diverge—and Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), a replenishable candy pile representing his partner’s body weight, merge personal loss with universal themes of time, love, and mortality. These works invite viewer interaction, transforming private grief into shared experience while challenging traditional portraiture through mutable media and audience participation.
The Hong Kong presentation features installations like paper stacks with conflicting phrases—freely taken by visitors—and sweets distributed in Tai Hang and Central Market, emphasizing accessibility and multiplicity. Director Cristina Vere Nicoll notes varied public engagement, underscoring the city’s resonance with González-Torres’s themes of transit and transformation. Though the artist described his work as “ephemeral,” its poetic interplay of loss and renewal continues to illuminate contemporary spaces worldwide.
News Source: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts/article/3334454/felix-gonzalez-torres-exhibition-hong-kong-highlights-his-ever-changing-works
(3) Hokusai’s “The Great Wave” Smashes Record, Selling for $2.8 Million USD at Sotheby’s Hong Kong
(Photo Credit: SOTHEBY’s)
A high-stakes bidding war driven indirectly by a feud between two Japanese billionaires has propelled two legendary ukiyo-e masterpieces to record-shattering prices. At Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction on November 22, Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (circa 1830–1832) — arguably the most recognizable woodblock print in the world and a highlight of his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series — sold for HK$21.7 million (approximately S$3.62 million) to a Japanese collector. The price nearly tripled the high estimate, with more than 20 bids placed during an intense eight-minute battle.
In an even more dramatic result, Kitagawa Utamaro’s large-scale Fukagawa in Snow — one of the celebrated Snow, Moon, and Flowers trilogy — achieved a new world auction record for the artist at HK$55.27 million, also acquired by a Japanese buyer. The two flagship works were among 125 exceptional pieces deaccessioned from Japan’s prestigious Okada Museum of Art, a collection that Sotheby’s Asia chairman Nicolas Chow described to ARTnews as “the most significant offering of East Asian art to come to auction in recent memory.”
The sale earned rare “white-glove” status, with every lot sold for a total of HK$688 million. Beyond the ukiyo-e triumphs, standout results included important Chinese antiquities such as a monumental Ya Yi fanglei ritual bronze vessel from the Shang Dynasty, an imperial bajixiang vase from the Qianlong era, and a finely crafted celadon-glazed lotus-mouth bottle vase from the Yongzheng period, underscoring the extraordinary depth and historical importance of the Okada collection.
News Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/life/arts/billionaires-spat-sparks-sothebys-sale-of-hokusai-and-utamaro-works-at-record-breaking-prices
(4) Chanel and Power Station of Art Unveil Mainland China’s First Public Contemporary Art Library
(Photo Credit: Chen Hao/ARTASIAPACIFIC)
Espace Gabrielle Chanel, mainland China’s first public library dedicated to contemporary art, has opened on the third floor of Shanghai’s Power Station of Art (PSA). Designed by Japanese architect Kazunari Sakamoto, the 5,466-square-meter space houses over 50,000 books and audiobooks—more than 10,000 of which are currently accessible—alongside an upgraded exhibition hall and a terrace with views of the Huangpu River.
The library marks the first Asia-based initiative of the Chanel Culture Fund, stemming from a strategic partnership between PSA and Chanel launched in 2021. According to Chanel’s president for arts, culture, and heritage, Yana Peel, the space embodies the fund’s commitment to cross-cultural exchange, heritage preservation, and avant-garde creativity, while PSA director Gong Yan described it as a tribute to cultural pioneers and new artistic narratives.
Globally engaged in 50 projects, the Chanel Cultural Fund has also partnered with institutions such as Hong Kong’s M+ and Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art. Future developments at Espace Gabrielle Chanel include establishing an Archive of Chinese Contemporary Art and a 300-seat public theater, further enriching Shanghai’s cultural infrastructure.
