Steph Huang debuts 'Grafting'

Taiwanese artist Steph Huang presented Grafting in Art Basel Hong Kong’s Encounters sector in late March, placing a large-scale installation at the center of the fair’s 2026 edition. (taiwannews.com.tw) The work was shown by Perrotin during the fair’s March 25-29 run in Hong Kong, with previews beginning before the public days at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. (perrotin.com) (voguehk.com) Encounters is Art Basel Hong Kong’s section for projects that exceed the limits of a standard booth, and the 2026 edition included 12 large-scale works organized around the elements Ether, Water, Fire and Earth. (artbasel.com) (voguehk.com) Art Basel placed Huang in the Ether section alongside Suki Seokyeong Kang and Nobuya Hoki, framing the grouping around links between tradition and contemporaneity, body and time, memory and the present. (artbasel.com) Perrotin said Huang was selected for Encounters with Grafting, while outside coverage described the installation as exploring cultural hybridity and the transplanting of forms across places. (perrotin.com) (hashtaglegend.com) Taiwan News reported that the project intertwined private memory with collective history, and Vogue Hong Kong said the installation grew from a fictional recollection of childhood memories in Taiwan. (taiwannews.com.tw) (voguehk.com) Huang, who was born in Yuanlin City, Taiwan, in 1990 and lives and works in London, has built a practice around sculpture, installation, film and sound using everyday materials and spaces. (perrotin.com) Her recent institutional shows include Lili Deli at Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2025 and Art Now: Steph Huang: See, See, Sea at Tate Britain from July 12, 2024, to January 5, 2025. (perrotin.com) The debut also landed inside a fair testing the regional market. Art Basel Hong Kong hosted 240 galleries from 41 countries and territories in 2026, and ARTnews reported that major galleries were still posting seven-figure sales on opening day even as others described the pace as slower than usual. (voguehk.com) (artnews.com) That set the terms for how Grafting was seen: not as a booth object, but as a museum-scale installation circulating through a commercial fair, with institutions in mainland China and Hong Kong reported to be tracking it. (artnews.com) By the time the fair opened to the public on March 27, Huang’s installation had become one of the works through which Art Basel Hong Kong was explaining its 2026 edition — a fair built around scale, regional curating and cross-border attention. (artbasel.com) (taiwannews.com.tw)