Austrian painter Xenia Hausner is obsessed with people. Captivated by the interpersonal relationships she observes in the everyday, the Austrian artist absorbs these vignettes only to reclaim them in her own imagined narratives. Ordinary people are models for her large-scale paintings, which using bold, vivid colors, depict her these figures in an often exaggerated and theatrical manner. The women that make up the main subjects of her paintings are at times challenging and defiant, while at others seductive, aloof or vulnerable. ArtAsiaPacific met up with the 63-year-old artist a few days before her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong opened at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, to discuss her background in stage design, her working process and her innate infatuation with exploring the lives of those around her.

Singaporean-born New York-based photographer John Clang is known for his low-tech style; resisting the temptations of Photoshop, he prefers instead to hand-cut and paste images together.  Working mainly with the idea of accessibility, challenging the barriers between the artist and the audience, his ongoing series “(Re)Contextualizing My Mind,” (1996–?), now on show at Pékin Fine Arts in Hong Kong, brings forth a different side of the artist. The photographs here show poetic translations of Clang’s thoughts, and the images featured are equally abstract. Though he declines to identify them this way, the works feel like a walk through the artist’s visual diary. On the occasion of the exhibition, ArtAsiaPacific spoke with Clang briefly about his work and his passion for archiving.

What could be a better canvas to work on than Hong Kong’s iconic skyline? For this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong, German light and sound artist Carsten Nicolai did just that with Alpha Pulse (2014), a huge installation powered by the light system of the city’s International Commerce Centre (ICC). For three nights during the fair, the 484-meter building, which sits across the harbor in Kowloon, sent pulsating light signals for just under an hour. With an app created by the artist available for download, participants could receive the light and audio signals from the tower on their own phones, and experience a new way of interacting with the city.

Piecing together discarded shards of porcelain, and marking joins and bare edges with lines of gold leaf, Korean artist Yeesookyung creates new shapes, often softly curved and anthropomorphic, occasionally jagged and alien. Her ceramic practice, which started with the “Translated Vases” series in 2006, has proved therapeutic for the artist, and the resulting works are profoundly, undeniably beautiful.

Kazakh artist Erbossyn Meldibekov is in constant conflict with his identity. His exhibition “Mountains of Revolution,” now on view at Rossi & Rossi gallery in Hong Kong, demonstrates the struggle faced by an artist emanating from a region that is relatively unknown. In his performance at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Meldibekov introduced himself as being from the fictive nation of Pastan. When questioned on the gullibility of his viewers, the artist responded challengingly “few people care where Tajikistan or Turkmenistan is. To them, Central Asia might as well be a meteorite that exploded out of Venus.”

“Dreaming Rich” is an extension of British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare’s critical and intellectual interest in colonialism and postcolonialism, and their impact on identity, politics and economic realities. On the occasion of his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, at Pearl Lam Galleries, the artist shows a series of new works commenting on Hong Kong’s relationship to labor, power and wealth.

Hong Kong streets have a deafening chatter, of the visual kind. Every night, the ICC Tower projects an LED light show in Central and down in the urban canopy hundreds of neon signs chart the alleys. “Visual culture is a fuzzily defined thing. But one can say for sure that neon signs are a very important part” said curator Aric Chen recently after an infamous Sai Ying Pun eatery sign was deemed illegal and subsequently claimed as an objet d’art in M+ Museum for Visual Culture’s permanent collection.

Founded in 2008, the Hong Kong-based initiative Soundpocket examines the interstices of art, culture and life through the fluid movements of sound. Its projects include the Around Sound art festival and retreat—the third iteration held earlier this year—which invites participants to listen through a series of site-specific installations, performances and dialogues. Pocket is the project’s written corollary begun in 2010—and one of its few physical traces—where artists, and other collaborators reflect upon their encounters during various sonic happenings.  This second edition of the journal, a small, tasteful volume of blue-gray, takes a revelatory tone, entreating the reader to step back in silence, allowing sounds to emerge.