Art Basel, Basel 2025
Art Basel 2025, one of the world’s leading contemporary art fair will take place in Basel, Switzerland, from June 17th to 22nd , 2025. The premier art fair is renowned for its global reach and influence in the art market. The 56th edition brings about 291 galleries participating from 42 countries highlighting its global representation and impact. This year two Indian galleries will be part of this global celebration of art. Vincenzo de Bellis, Chief Artistic officer and Global Director states that Art Basel is a platform to show, sell, and buy art. “That is our institutional responsibility, and we embrace it fully – because it’s a crucial part of sustaining the entire ecosystem we represent. The key lies in striking the right balance: delivering thought-provoking, world-class programming while keeping the market at the center. That balance is what defines Art Basel as an organization and
sets it apart globally.”
Must see artworks at Art Basel
Nicola Turner, Danse Macabre, 2025 Presented by Annely Juda Fine Art (London) in Unlimited
This monumental installation is created using a mass of salvaged horsehair and raw wool that the artist has locally sourced. The title of the work is derived from a 15th century mural that was once painted on the walls of Basel. The mural was torn down by the natives as it represented death as a
social equalizer during the time of the plague in 1805.
Ayan Farah, Desert Seeds, 2025Presented by Kadel Willborn (Düsseldorf) and Galerie Nordenhake (Berlin, Mexico City, Stockholm) in Unlimited
Ayan Farah’s Desert Seeds, a landscape painting comprise a fragment of land itself. The artwork deeply personal to the artist as it consists of elements from her childhood, like clay from the Sanaag region of Somalia, where Farah’s parents were born and second, cloud-seeded water from
the UAE, where she spent part of her childhood. The gigantic artwork is about 12 meters in size and talks about personal history and displacement.
NadirSagarika Sundaram, Released Form, 2024. Courtesy of UBS Art Collection. Photograph by Daniel Greera Husain, The Haunted Museum, 2025 Presented by PSM (Berlin) in collaboration with Hua International (Berlin, Beijing) in Unlimited
The Haunted Museum is a satirical interpretation of the iconic Egyptian artifact ‘Bust of Nefertiti’ placed in Berlin’s Neues Museum. The storyline revolves around the modern day version of the Egyptian queen. The work is created in three wooden panels and has a vibrant color palette.
Emerging artists at Art Basel
Armineh Negahdari (b. 1994, Iran) Marcelle Alix , France,
Armineh is an Iranian artist whose body of work highlights the political violence and social oppression. The distorted figures, wounds and blood stains trigger the very question of political tension and socio-economic injustice that prevails in the society. Her choices of dull and dark colors reflect the core of her primary subject.
Alexandra Metcalf (b. 1992, United Kingdom) Ginny on Frederick, United Kingdom,
British artist Alexandra Metcalf chooses to work with an array of mediums that challenges and deconstructs the entrenched biases. With bold and dramatic paintings, the artist aims to reinterprets the history of gendered labor though ornamental traditions. Her preferred mediums are bronze casting, wood carving and stain glass.
Felix Shumba (b. 1989, Zimbabwe) Jahmek Contemporary Art , Angola
Felix Shumbha, a multidisciplinary artist from Zimbabwe focuses on the dark history and lasting trauma caused by colonial powers when British backed Rhodesian security forces raided the refugee camps in Mozambique. The Zimbabwe African National Liberation camps witnessed deaths of thousands of men, women and children. His installation includes a charcoal mural of a crepuscular forest, striking oil paintings of soldiers’
silhouettes, and a sculpture designed to play archival war transmissions, church hymns, and poems read by Shumba’s grandmother.
Indian artists in Focus:
Bhasha Chakrabarti, Experimenter Kolkata
Bhasha Chakrabarti will be showcasing her new work Oceanic feelings from her ongoing series ‘The ship and its co-conspirator’, (to capitalism and to its undoing). The artwork is inspired by a series of visits that she has done to ship breaking yards across South Asia. It is a triptych work, embroidered and needle felted done on used and discarded clothing based on the eroded and barnacled surfaces of these mammoth vessels, which have
reached the end of their lives. Her vision talks about the immediate reality, mass consumption and un-sustainability under the process of recycling.
Sagarika Sundaram: New York based, Kolkata
She combines organic material and botanical forms with techniques inspired by her mother’s saree collection. The artist will be showcasing a vivacious 12 metres long textile installation ‘Released form’ (2024), providing a unique blend of textile art.
Mohit Selhare, Chemould Presscott Road, Mumbai
Mohit weaves around the concept of waste, inequality of toxicity in the world and abstraction of impurity. He draws pigs using grim and dark color palette showing them as potent disruptors in pool of contamination.
Featuring Image Courtesy: GLM International
Contributor
