ART BASEL IN BASEL 2025

The presentation brings together artists whose practices address colonial histories, migration, and notions of imaginedor displaced geographies. Through a variety of media, the presentation reflects on memory, movement and the shiftinglandscapes of identity.

A central work is the latest in William Kentridge’s sculptural exploration of symbolism and language, ‘Italics Plus’ (2024).This series of small bronze ‘glyphs’ are the artist’s newest series following ‘Cursive’ (2020), ‘Lexicon’ (2017) and ‘Paragraph II’(2018). This ongoing exploration includes a repertoire of everyday objects or implied words and icons, many of which haveappeared across previous projects and are key elements in his major upcoming solo exhibition at the Yorkshire SculpturePark opening 28 June 2025. The YSP exhibition marks the first museum presentation outside South Africa to focus on hissculpture.

Kapwani Kiwanga’s new work explores material culture, commerce and cultural transformation. It examines how differentforms of power are expressed, the histories they suppress that are often ignored and their impact on everyday life. Theseworks build on Kiwanga’s site-responsive Canadian Pavilion installation at the 2024 Venice Biennale, ‘Trinket’, and herrecent solo at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto in 2025.

Highlights also include a large-scale painting by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum continuing her engagement with a femmefatal figure seen in her cinematic 2024 solo presentation at the Barbican, London,’ It Will End In Tears’. Her work will alsobe highlighted at this year’s Taipei Biennial opening in November 2025.

A new painting by Ravelle Pillay responds to the artist’s 2024 trip to Réunion Island, offering a layered exploration of theisland’s complex colonial history and its enduring influence on the landscape and its people. In September 2025, Pillay willunveil a major institutional commission in the UK.

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA’s work is also drawn from his larger work ‘Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul’which was included in the Nigerian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. The work engages directly with the Beninexpedition of 1897 which led to the looting of thousands of valuable spiritual and cultural artefacts from the kingdom ofBenin. Shonibare’s inclusion occurs simultaneously with his first major survey of the African continent, ‘Safiotra[Hybridités/Hybridities]’ at Fondation H in Madagascar.

Work from Alfredo Jaar’s ground breaking series of installations titled ‘People without Names’ (1986) will also be on view.These now iconic works speak to the tragedy that many people experience violence, including physical, political andpsychological, in complete invisibility and that often the casualties are everyday people whose names are not known.This comes ahead of Jaar being awarded the recipient of the 65th annual Edward MacDowell Medal in June 2025 for hiscontributions to the field of visual arts.

Other highlights include Ghada Amer’s ‘Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie’ is from the artist’s period in the 1990s whenher sculptures prominently featured embroidery on canvas. The inclusion of Leonardo Drew’s wall sculptures appearconcurrently with the artist’s immersive installation that will take over South London Gallery, titled ‘Ubiquity II’, which ishis first solo exhibition in a London institution.