art lovers arent usually allowed to handle priceless works of art but robin rhodes gusheshe loosely translated as acceleration invites viewers to burrow their heads into a drawing of a bmw e30 and step through the fiery trail the car leaves behind rhodes work was one of five virtual reality vr pieces on display at art basel in hong kong this week the vr piece was beautiful said dan thawley a visitor to the exhibition i had to understand how to move inside the artwork and i could also control whether i wanted to see it up close or in parts the vr works were the outcome of a collaboration with google arts culture which invited artists selected by art basel to residencies in beijing and paris this years hong kong show had six indian galleries including mumbais jhaveri contemporary galleryske and kolkatas experimenter interestingly there are ten great indian collectors who have come here this year said art basels global director marc spiegel adding that this was a shift from the past in the beginning india and japan were not so well represented in terms of both collectors and galleries but in the last five years that has changed mumbais chemould prescott road showcased artist desmond lazaros the commonwealth and yardena kurulkars kenosis a series of photographs depicting a 3dprinted terracotta replica of her own heart slowly decaying i wanted to bring artists who work with natural material said gallerist shireen gandhy explaining that last year one such artist was a big favourite with chinese collectors gandhy who has been part of the hong kong art shows selection committee even before it became part of art basel claims the process is very stringent all galleries have to send a proposal with images artists cvs and a curated story she says a range of famous artists were represented at the exhibition including a concave pinkpurple reflective disk by bombayborn londonbased artist anish kapoor the shows most iconic piece was by hong kong artist kingsley ng in twentyfive minutes older visitors clambered to the upper deck of a tram where pinholes functioned as moving camera obscuras projecting scenes from hong kongs streets in reverse familiar images of tall buildings and luxury stores captured as the tram swayed from wan chai to western market are accompanied by recorded extracts from cantonese novelist liu yichangs streamofconsciousness novella tetebeche which fittingly means a joined pair of stamps in which one is upside down in relation to the other theres a lot of meaning packed into this clanging installation of mirroring forms the fact that each passenger hears just one side of the story either told from the perspective of a young girl or an old man the nostalgia associated with hong kongs 113yearold trams affectionately called ding dings like our tuk tuks and the subsequent idea of public transportation as a time capsule where everyone ages simultaneouslythe writer was in hong kong at the invitation of art basel