It’s no wonder Shanyan Koder has forged an enviable reputation as a trusted adviser to serious art collectors and institutions—after all, she is the daughter of renowned collector Canning Fok. Now the creative London-based entrepreneur is shaking up the art market with a digital revolution. She speaks to us about her passion for fine art and how she foresees the online potential in the art world:
In the living room of Shanyan Koder’s London home sits a large, iridescent canvas by Damien Hirst. “It’s the only butterfly work by Damien—and he’s done a lot—that has every single butterfly from his entire series within a single work,” says the Hong Kong-born entrepreneur, an avid art collector. “It’s pretty incredible.”
Her entire personal collection is equally incredible and includes all you’d expect and more, from a Tracey Emin neon to a Degas pastel on paper, from an Antony Gormley figure to a couple of Chris Ofili paintings and photographs by Candida Höfer. It’s a mix of emerging and established, modern and contemporary, Eastern and Western pieces, many of which she lives with and all of which are the result of emotion-driven purchases.
Family influence
“Be it that I love it or it makes me sad, I have to have a reaction,” says the daughter of Canning Fok (whose role as Li Ka-shing’s right-hand man gave him the wherewithal to build his own extensive art collection and inspire his daughter). “Emotionally, spiritually, psychologically—I might hate it, it might make me angry but I have to react to it, rather than understanding the concept or thinking it’s an investable piece of art.” The importance of her emotional reactions was one of the things she came to understand as a little girl accompanying her mother and father to auctions to bid on Renoirs and Picassos for their collection of Impressionist masters.
Today, Shanyan is the art expert in the family, in charge of managing the collection begun by her father. And although many of her father’s words of wisdom echo in her ears when it comes to buying—such golden rules as “don’t get carried away chasing a work”—she is an expert in her own right at navigating the rapidly changing market, having founded several art-related businesses in London, where she lives with her high-flying banker husband Matthew and their two daughters.