Art Basel Hong Kong 2026: Booth 3C11, Sector Echoes

25 - 29 March 2026 

Capsule and Klemm’s jointly present a group project that showcases the latest works by women artists Leelee Chan, Elizabeth Jaeger and Yan Xinyue. Though rooted in divergent geographies and aesthetic sensibilities, their practices intersect through a shared sensitivity to placeness and its underlying emotional intricacy.

 

Leelee Chan’s (b. 1984, Hong Kong) sculptures investigate the porous boundaries between industrial infrastructure and organic growth. In Cambium Wanderer (2024), a found plastic shipping pallet is transformed into an arcane wall relic entwined with root forms, bronze wildflowers, and amber resin. Drawing on the cambium—the living layer beneath a tree’s bark responsible for growth—as well as from the sprawling tree roots that reclaim the urban environment in Hong Kong, the work evokes parallels between subterranean root systems and the global circulation of goods that pallets enable. In her new work Sensitive Circuit (2026)–cast in lost wax from manipulated fragments of found shipping pallets–Chan further explores hidden systems and the material interconnections between the natural and the artificial, referencing mycorrhizal fungal systems that allow trees to communicate underground while echoing the above-ground infrastructures that sustain global economies.

 

Titled after cemeteries in California, Sri Lanka, Venice, and beyond, Elizabeth Jaeger’s (b. 1988, San Francisco)black ceramic and metal sculptures of flower vases are scattered across the booth, transforming the space into a mildly surreal garden. Compact ceramic vessels rest atop slender blackened steel legs, elevating them into poised, almost architectural presences. From their apertured surfaces rise bouquets of darkened, attenuated flowers, their forms restrained and upright, frozen in a moment of bloom. The works’ uniformity in black renders the scene with a postapocalyptic tranquility. This psychological garden is interspersed with small sculptures of rats–intelligent urban scavengers that feed on and clean the remnants of human activity. A ceramic sculpture of a bird rests high on the wall, gazing downward at viewers and evoking an unexpected sense of self-awareness. Jaeger’s work foregrounds the fluid boundaries between beings, inviting a meditation on life’s vulnerability and endurance.

 

Yan Xinyue’s (b.1992, China) paintings rarely anchor themselves in a recognizable setting; instead, they conjure the emotional atmospheres of contemporary metropolitan life. In The answer is blowing in the wind #2 and #3, branches extend across softly modulated grounds as foliage drifts, dissolves, or hovers in suspension. The leaves appear caught between attachment and release, their shifting colors and blurred contours evoking states of uncertainty and quiet transition. Rather than depicting specific landscapes, Yan renders psychological weather—moments where perception feels fluid and time unsettled. In My Little Universe (2026), the experience of flight becomes a meditation on the convergence of time and space. The subjective sense of time overlaps with the vast scale of the universe, where a sense of infinity gently unfolds.

 

Rather than depicting site as a fixed location, each artist approaches place as a condition shaped by memory, material circulation, and psychological projection.

 


 

 

FILM SECTOR 
Capsule is also pleased to participate in the Short Film Program “Signals Beneath the Surface: Bodies, Space, and Resistance” with artist Lucy McRae’s (B. 1979 in London, UK. Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA) video Delicate Spells of Mind (2022). 
 
Delicate Spells of Mind tells the story of a mind split against itself. The Seeker builds gadgets and games to push away bad thoughts, using clunky technology to control her mind. Her shadow, the Others, appear in motion-capture suits that want to be filled with sensors but remain empty and defunct. As the Seeker tries to avoid error, pain, and failure, the film asks: can we keep humanity while technology lures us to be fixed and fit in? A story about what we gain when we resist control and be brave in our difference. 
 
Lucy McRae is a British-born Australian science fiction artist, body architect, film maker and TED fellow. Her installations include film, photography, sculptures, and edible and wearable technology. Lucy’s fascination with the human body as an art medium began with 14 years of classical ballet training. After completing her Bachelor’s in interior design from RMIT Australia in 1999, McRae began to explore the bond between the body and its near environment through the lens of architecture, fashion, and dance. Her first foray into the future was designing implantable, emotion- sensing, and wearable tech at a far-future design research laboratory at Philips, using art to provoke emerging technologies. 
 
Screening 
Time: Friday, March 27, 2026, 6pm – 7:04pm
Address: Auditorium, N101B, Level 1, Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Click here to RSVP.