Coco Capitán Debuts Immersive Exhibition at Taikoo Place Ahead of Art Basel Hong Kong

HONG KONG — Spanish artist Coco Capitán, who has collaborated with the likes of Gucci, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Belmond, has debuted a major Hong Kong statement.

Coinciding with Art Basel Hong Kong, she unveiled “ArtisTree Selects: Imagination Investments” last week at Taikoo Place, a self-described sustainable and human-centric business hub hosting leading luxury brands like Chanel, Prada and Louis Vuitton, alongside international law firms, financial institutions and tech companies.

The three-part exhibition, billed as the flagship program of Swire Properties Arts Month, threads through key touch points within Taikoo Place, including the cultural venue ArtisTree, the walkways of Taikoo Place and the 67th floor of the flagship office tower One Island East, which boasts a panoramic view of the Hong Kong skyline.

A leading mixed-use developer in Hong Kong, mainland China and beyond, Swire Properties is known for building and managing some of the most successful luxury retail projects in the region, which also include Pacific Place in Hong Kong; Taikoo Li Sanlitun in Beijing; HKRI Taikoo Hui and Taikoo Li Qiantan in Shanghai; Taikoo Hui Guangzhou, and Taikoo Li Chengdu.

During a preview, the London-based artist said she was offered an open brief by Swire Properties to create an exhibition.

“I had never been to Hong Kong before, and I was just really intrigued. I saw it more as an opportunity to bring my art to a new country,” she said.

The fashion world knows Capitán from runway-adjacent imagery as well as from white cubes. For around a decade, she has built a career moving between fine art, editorial commissions and commercial collaborations. Her analogue photography and bittersweet, funny, slightly off-kilter handwritten texts have been seen across billboards and campaigns, turning her script almost into a logo.

“I always had this fantasy of China. I thought that if I dug a hole in the back of my garden, I’d appear on the other side of the world and everything was going to be different,” recalled the artist on her fascination with the region from an early age.

Later, that idea became the basis for her first photo book, “Middle Point.” Capitán said it was “a mix between the fantasy of how I imagined China would be and the actual reality of being there.”

The immersive art experience unfolds with the first chapter, “Naïvy” at ArtisTree, showcasing more than 50 photographs, paintings and text works around the figure of the sailor, a recurring motif in Capitán’s practice.

“I’m just very inspired by the sea,” she said. “When I spend time sailing, I feel like the whole universe gets reduced to that boat. When you’re in a boat with another group of people, that’s all the people you can have access to, but also all the food, like everything you need needs to be on that boat. So I feel like the whole world becomes that community.”

At the same time, she thinks that experience tells a lot about human fragility. “We are enclosed in this tiny space. We have to trust each other, but also, you are really exposed to nature,” she said, adding that the sailor is both a free agent and an anonymous worker, a familiar tension in fashion imagery, where uniforms, workwear and youth all get stylized and sold.

On the wall hang reappropriations of the World War II navy sailor outfits, embroidered with text and small daisies.

Capitán said those are about memory and expressing singularities within uniformity. Some might see it as a reflection on how individuality survives inside systems that prefer sameness, whether that’s the military, a corporate tower or even a global luxury ecosystem.

Between ArtisTree and One Island East, the second component, “I Read While I Walk,” stretches nearly half a kilometer through Taikoo Place’s walkways, embedding her handwritings into the commuting routes of the same fashion executives who would know her from campaigns.

“It works as a connector between the two spaces, and really, it’s about people taking a pause and reflecting on some of my quotes. I always think that I like it when art is accessible. I don’t believe that art should be like this kind of highbrow intellectual community that is kind of reserved for a few,” Capitán said.

“I hope that people who maybe haven’t stepped into a gallery before or thought of art before, maybe they can, you know, see one of the writings and not even think, ‘Oh, what is that? Is it art?’ But more like, maybe connect with the content,” she continued.

“Memory Adoption Bureau,” the final chapter of the exhibition, takes over the 10,000-square-foot space above many fashion brands’ regional offices on the 67th floor of One Island East. Capitán turned the vacant office into a fictional bureau for lost memories, built on her archive of more than 10,000 vernacular photographs.

“Sometimes I even buy photographs by the kilogram. Some of these photographs, the value of one of them wouldn’t even be one cent, but a quarter of a cent. As a lover of photography and a lover of culture in general, I found it quite heartbreaking to find these photographs so devalued,” she said.

“Especially in the past, photography wasn’t like today, where we have our phones and take thousands of pictures of everything. To take a picture back then had a cost, and it was a precious thing,” Capitán added.

In Hong Kong, these images are offered back into circulation, as each visitor will receive a passport. After browsing the archive, they can formally “adopt” a photograph to take home.

“The intention behind this project is to make my audience aware that preserving the collective memory is an exercise that we can all participate in. It’s impossible for me to care for so many memories, so I want to invite the audience to come and adopt one memory, and by doing this, we are reevaluating these photographs and giving them new value, and hopefully, people can realize how important it is to preserve the collective memory,” she said.

When asked about how she approached an unorthodox space for an art experience, Capitán said she refused to turn it into a traditional gallery setting with white walls.

“To cover this view would be an art crime,” she joked. “When I first came, there was a regatta going on. So it was quite fun because I was looking at pictures of sailboats, and then there was the regatta underneath and the photographs of the sailboats here.”

A second chapter of Capitán’s creative expression is scheduled for the end of 2026, as part of her ongoing collaboration with Swire Properties.

Capitán said the upcoming installment will likely draw on what she discovers in the coming weeks in Hong Kong. “I’m kind of thinking, how will the navy of Hong Kong look like?” she said.

Priscilla Li, deputy director of office in Hong Kong at Swire Properties, touted that art plays a vital role in Taikoo Place’s ecosystem.

“It helps create livable places that are aspirational, not because they are exclusive, but because they are meaningful,” she said, adding that the public art approach helps transform the development into an open, evolving cultural platform.

Li also revealed that her team listens closely to tenant feedback, since cultural projects like “Imagination Investments” contribute to a workplace environment that feels more reflective and engaging.

“From a broader perspective, these softer outcomes may not always be immediately measurable, but they play a meaningful role in building resilient, desirable communities, which is fundamental to how we create the future of place of work,” she added.

Li lauded Capitán’s creative vision, which helped exemplify the importance of creating art that is both conceptually prominent and responsive to its environment.

“This project was built on a foundation of trust and partnership. Through close collaboration, we were able to work with her in a way that respected her artistic vision while ensuring the work meaningfully engaged with the spaces and audiences at Taikoo Place,” she said.

With Capitán’s second chapter, Li promised it would respond more closely to the Hong Kong context, building on what audiences have already encountered and deepening the conversation through shared memory and local experience.

“We hope this will encourage audiences to reengage with the work in a more reflective and layered way. That kind of ongoing dialogue helps culture feel embedded rather than episodic. For Taikoo Place, this continuity reinforces our belief that art and culture should feel embedded, not temporary — it is part of our daily lives,” Li added.