Art Basel has seen its fair share of attention-grabbing moments over the years, but a topless artist standing in cow hooves outside the fair’s entrance wasn’t on most people’s bingo card.
On Wednesday, the anonymous performance artist OONA staged Milking the Artist II, an unannounced guerrilla performance in Messeplatz, the public square at the entrance of the world’s most influential art fair. For 33 minutes, she stood there silently before police intervened and removed her from the square.
Curated by Anika Meier, the performance unfolded without explanation, audience participation or any visible indication that it was part of an artwork. As collectors, curators, gallerists and influencers moved between appointments and preview events, OONA remained completely still. The image was difficult to ignore: bare chest, cow hooves and a carton of milk.
"Displaying my body in Messeplatz was not about public nudity, which is legal in Switzerland. It was about presenting the female body as both image and artist, the thing of value and the thing that generates value." – OONA
For anyone familiar with OONA’s work, the performance fits into a broader practice built around anonymity, surveillance, power and the economics of visibility. In Milking the Artist II, she appears as a dairy cow, a body valued for its ability to produce. The comparison is pointed. Artists are routinely measured by output, visibility, sales, followers and cultural relevance, long before the labour behind that work enters the conversation. Hidden behind a mask and dark sunglasses, she has spent years examining who gets looked at, who profits from that attention and who gets to control the narrative.
And this wasn’t her first time bringing those questions to Art Basel. Back in 2022, during Art Basel Miami Beach, OONA and artist Lori Baldwin presented the first Milking the Artist. The project generated headlines after a glass of OONA’s breast milk sold for $200,000 at auction, extending the artists’ investigation into artistic labour, commodification and systems of value.
The Basel sequel pushed that conversation into a different setting. There was no auction and no object for sale. Instead, OONA placed herself at the centre of the work.
"I wanted to make visible the labour that usually remains hidden behind the image. The work asks what happens when artistic production itself becomes the artwork." – OONA
The police intervention quickly became part of the story. According to OONA, officers appeared more concerned with her face covering than her exposed breasts. From the artist’s perspective, the removal wasn’t separate from the performance either.
“The police became collaborators. Their intervention completed the performance. Authority always reveals the frame.”
– OONA