I started treating international art fairs like global-ish exhibitions rather than the hyper-commercial entities which, of course, they are. Before you judge me for being too kind towards the spectacle of extreme wealth, entertaining the elite while the world is burning, performing the good life while commenting on the urgency of a political artwork which, although made in 1993, is as pressing as the daily news – L.A.P.D. Uniforms by Chris Burden – you will make the connection.
And yes, I would love to know: what did Kanye West buy? Did he buy anything? Or was his appearance in the middle of the busiest pre-opening of Art Basel Unlimited art itself? Of course, he must have had access to First Choice, which allows you to enter with the “serious” collectors before all the other VIP riff-raff and before the commoners arrive from Wednesday onwards. He might even have had access to everything before that. Super VIP.
Am I sad I missed this fanfare because I left the opening early to attend a very cool jazz event? Absolutely. But not really.
Back to the beginning, art fairs as exhibitions. When else do you get to see so much art, from so many countries, all in one place, at the same time, united by the singular act of presenting and selling artists’ work? Never. Which is why I always tell friends: go and enjoy it, criticise it, wrinkle your nose – all of that is fair enough – but go and see all this amazing stuff.
I often think about the psychology of spaces, not in terms of practical access but in how we move through, interact with and understand ourselves and the world around us. An art fair like Art Basel, in particular, is a pristine case study. Here, an opaque system of class and capitalism presents itself with remarkable clarity – boundaries, positioning, hierarchy – all converging in a moment of chance, desire and a tiny city on the Rhine.
It all starts with Liste Art Fair on Monday morning. Before that, there are openings, gatherings and performances for those already in town. The earlier you arrive, the more it seems to suggest a certain importance. I arrive by train to go to Katharina Hajek’s exhibition in her apartment – A Table of One’s Own – showing artists in an intimate and domestic setting. It is the smoothest possible welcome to three days of extremes, punished feet and erratic looking at art.
It is also the beginning of a rather sober colour palette. As one friend complained: “It’s all so beige.” Many of the works I encounter lean towards the darker side of human existence, the strange, but also the meticulous – a fascination with material, surface and perspective. Perhaps it signals a return to conversations around the object itself before the story unfolds, moving away from the explicit narration and moral certainties of previous years.
After some lovely conversations and introductions that mostly end with the prediction, “We will see each other at the next event for sure,” a self-fulfilling prophecy takes hold. You either bump into the same people ten times over or disappear entirely amongst the many bodies flocking in. Meeting people at a fair of this magnitude is like a weird performance piece in itself. There are the unexpected encounters with friends, former colleagues or employers – the ones you have to remind, every single time, who you are and that yes, you did indeed work for them and yes, you have also been to their penthouse in Manhattan, which was, of course, lovely.
Then there is the small talk, which always – and I kid you not, always – follows the same script.
Hi, how are you? So wonderful to see you. It’s been a while. Yes hahaha, every year we meet. You good? Wonderful, we should get together. How long are you staying? Oh, only! Well, okay. Enjoy. So good to see you.
And then there are the gems: friends and genuinely interesting, wonderful and exciting human beings whom one meets, re-meets and occasionally gets to spend some quality time with. It is a full-course menu.
Speaking of menus – one has to be strategic about when and where to eat. Take every opportunity you get: brunches, dinners, snack bars. It is Switzerland after all. But also, don’t start drinking too much. Not the bubbles, not the Kool-Aid. Being attracted by things that sparkle is fine, but don’t touch. You will thank me later. By now we are at the opening of Liste Art Fair which, in the context of Art Basel as the OG and its simultaneously mythical First Choice, remains the more accessible fair. Less expensive and more alternative in spirit. Smaller, generous with space and a bit rougher around the edges. One of my favourites, to be honest.
And in my head I always applaud them for the bag design – another perk of the art fair business, where a tote bag giveaway is practically mandatory. While Art Basel is classic chic, Liste is loud and playful and, because they open first, everyone walks around with their burnt-orange tote bag. Genius. For me, a mere observer and commentator, Liste is at its most delightful because my eyes are still fresh and wide open. Not yet overstimulated. Not yet moving slowly from lack of sleep, carbs and bubbles. Here I take most of my photographs, either because the art is better or because I am fresher. I am still not sure which.
From there, Art Basel Unlimited opens – the section dedicated to large-scale works and serial repetition. I have always enjoyed this part in particular because it is such an interesting exercise in understanding one’s own presence within scale. I often wonder about the difference in perception and understanding of the self between a single monumental work, visually consolidated, and scale produced through repetition.
Of course, Kanye interrupted Unlimited while I was sitting in a bar in town listening to an homage to the South African jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim, who had passed away that very day. Organised by A4 Arts Foundation, it was one of those moments you should not miss. The special treat on a cluttered buffet table that makes the whole thing worthwhile.
Tuesday is the big day. Art Basel opens for the VIP crowd, somewhere between meet-and-greets and discoveries. I always think the hanging is too tight, too much. At least here they tend to label the works separately. I am a fan of metadata. Again, this sober aesthetic, and moments where I wonder: have I not seen this before? Was this not here last year too? How do we negotiate the new and the consistent? Materiality and surface continue to dominate and I find myself particularly drawn to fabric because of its layers. There is also a wonderful amount of strangeness – quite a lot of animals instead of human figures and then those fine, subtle marks one often encounters in Japanese art that never fail to excite me.
By this point my social energy is beginning to decline while my brain is bouncing up and down, trying to juggle all this new information. I have done the dance. Time to leave for another special treat that has arrived in Basel. An exhibition that acts as a complete antidote to the buzz.
In an intimate gallery space called Wird Nachgereicht, ROOM13 presents The Mountain, a long-term work by Invisible Flock – an immersive sound experience that places you in the middle of 3,000 reindeer circling during the annual corral in the Indigenous-governed Sápmi region of the Arctic. Not only a mental reprieve from the scorching summer day, but also a physical experience that allows room to breathe.
Then off to dinner with Robin Peckham, the director of the soon-to-open museum in Shenzhen for JD.com, one of China’s largest technology companies and online retail platforms, with the museum itself set to open at the end of 2027. Because this, too, is Basel: a marketplace of information, a web of multipliers and audiences. Somewhere between presentations and conversations about building a new museum, I find myself in a wonderfully funny exchange with a private art consultant, musing on the strange delight of the art fair. And learning things I never asked for but now greatly enjoy knowing. “John Cage is the mushroom guy,” says my dinner companion. And indeed, the legendary avant-garde composer was an obsessive amateur mycologist.
The next day I head across town to Basel Social Club, which seems to have cracked something the main fairs keep missing and often awkwardly trying to force: not every problem is solved by throwing money at it. Some things, perhaps most things, still require being embedded in the environment in which one works.
Founded in 2022 by a collective of artists, gallerists and curators, Basel Social Club set out to create social spaces around art. Each year a different building in Basel is transformed into a stage for exhibitions, performances, concerts and talks. For this iteration, that also includes yoga, Botox and a dystopian office building through which we all wandering around in.
By the end of day three, I am exhausted. Feet hurt, voices disappear and bags are heavier than they should be. Yet there are still dinners, drinks and that last thing one absolutely has to see. Art fairs are somewhat absurd. Excessive. Exhausting. Occasionally ridiculous. But somewhere between the spectacle and the shopping spree, the overheard conversations and chance encounters, the small exhibitions and moments of quiet, the thing that brought everyone here in the first place stubbornly remains. The art.
Because beneath the choreography of wealth and status, the tote bags and bubbles, the endless scripts of “So wonderful to see you” and “How long are you staying?”, there are still artworks that surprise, delight and unsettle. There are conversations one never expected to have, exhibitions tucked away in apartments and gallery back rooms, and those strange moments that somehow become the things one remembers most.
Perhaps that is why I have started thinking about art fairs less as marketplaces and more as global-ish exhibitions. Temporary cities with their own rituals and hierarchies, their own forms of desire and performance. For one week every year, Basel somehow becomes the centre of that world.