Between Image and Index - AVA Art Basel Parallel Exhibition: AVA Art Basel Parallel Exhibition

Janet Fong as the Chief Curator of “Between Image and Index” Contemporary Art exhibition, is a curatorial research project presented as a cross-regional exhibition across two gallery venues in Hong Kong (Koo Ming Kown Gallery, Kowloon Tong; AVA Gallery, Kai Tak Campus) from 19 March to 12 April 2026 during the Hong Kong Art Month as the HKBU Parallel Exhibition of Art Basel 2026. With 33 artists and collectives from Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Frankfurt, Berlin, Lisbon, Kraków, and Katowice, the curatorial practice explores the contemporary condition of pictoriality that no longer understood as stable representation but as an indexical process shaped by material grounding, technological mediation, and contextual circulation.
The research attempts to investigate pictorial meaning emerge through the extended representation on material and encounter and narratives. The exhibition also situated as a situated field of a spatial apparatus in dialogue with the perceptual environment of Art Basel’s main hall, within which meaning is generated not through illustration but through embodied experience and indexical registers (contact, residue, transformation). This curatorial approach operationalises exhibition-making as a primary research method.
The project initiates three original contributions: 1, initiating a 6 to 9 year longitudinal study of predictive art history, documenting emergent tendencies in international contemporary art grounding this longitudinal study in Hong Kong as the international art hub; (2) advancing a theoretical model of pictoriality as indexical rather than representational; (3) formalising cross-regional exhibition protocols as replicable research tools. Positioned during Hong Kong Art Month, the exhibition balances academic rigour with public engagement, demonstrating how curatorial practice generates new knowledge beyond conventional text-based outputs. Outcomes include a peer-reviewed catalogue, spatial documentation, and longitudinal comparative data for future analysis.

In the Exhibition and the opening, we successfully invited important practitioners and stakeholders to join and participate, including Directors/ curators of M+, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Palace Museum, Chairman and head of Programme committees of Hong Kong Art Centre and 1a space, Art practitioners from Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong Art Scene, Professors from Academic communities from HK, Vienna, Macao and Shenzhen including Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University of HK, Lingnan University, Shenzhen University, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Macao University, Macao Polytechnic University and Macao University science and technology.