ART BASEL HONG KONG 2026

For Araki, writing is not a separate artistic genre but rather a lifelong diary. Especially after the passing of his wife Yoko, his calligraphy became increasingly raw and melancholic—its strokes wild and messy, its gestures and emotional outbursts diffused across the paper. The booth will also present Araki’s iconic floral photography, where seemingly quiet and blooming flowers convey intense meditations on life and death. These blossoms are at once symbols of desire and fragile embodiments of life’s impermanence.

Araki is one of the most internationally recognized and accomplished Japanese photographers. Since his debut, he has published over 350 books and continues to produce new work every year, making him one of the most prolific artists in Japan and the world. His works are housed in major museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tate London, Musée Guimet, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

In contrast, Xu Jiong (b. 1983, Hangzhou, China) received formal training in traditional calligraphy, but his writing is far from classical poetry. Instead, he writes contemporary phrases and symbols—like street graffiti on a wall— where brushstrokes serve as emotional and identity markers, echoing the spirit of classical landscape painting within a modern context. Floral imagery often appears in Xu’s work as well. He roughly sketches flowers and integrates them with graffiti-like text on the same surface. Xu breaks the convention of flowers as aesthetic symbols, turning them into poetic ruins caught in visual tension—resonating with Araki’s decaying yet radiant flowers.

Xu Jiong’s recent major exhibitions include Petals, Lost and Lucid at CANS Tea House, Beijing (2025); Hengshan Calligraphy Biennale at Hengshan Calligraphy Art Center, Taoyuan (2023); Meeting You Again at Qiong Jiu Tang, Beijing (2023); Home at Nancheng Art Museum, Okinawa (2023); Morgenrot und Abendbrot, a group show at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Munich (2022); Shanshui 2022 SS at Each Modern, Taipei (2022); and ETERNAL PAST, PRESENT., a group exhibition organized by Chinese artist Zhao Zhao at Qiong Jiu Tang (2021).

In the works of Araki and Xu, writing is no longer merely calligraphy as beauty—it is gesture, attitude, and presence. They do not write traditional characters, but rather extend photography, inscribe bodily language, and channel emotional release. Through the juxtaposition of script and image, emotion and text, the booth reveals the weight of life, the fractures of language, and the traces of each artist’s struggle with existence through body and spirit.