Questions of death, desire, and the politics of representation loom large in the works of emerging artists in Art Basel’s Statements sector this year. Whether a giant sculpture evoking the wreckage of a slave ship or a multi-channel video documenting a dystopian social experiment, they deliver a frisson of emotion and awe. Here are seven young artists you don’t want to miss.
Sara Sadik
Galerie Crèvecœur, Paris
Living and working in Marseille, France, Sara Sadik’s work is inspired by the marginalization experienced by her family and wider community. Shattering stereotypes, her docufictions and CGI-animated films present rich, nuanced narratives that explore contemporary youth culture in the French-Maghrebi diaspora. The imagery draws from her collaborations with adolescents from working-class immigrant neighborhoods, as well as the language of social media, street fashion, and reality television. Galerie Crèvecœur unveils her latest multichannel video Ultimate Vatos: Force & Honneur (Vol 1.) (2022), which delves into ideas of masculinity, loneliness, and vulnerability. The piece is named after a dystopian social experiment in which men are ranked according to their natural propensity to behave violently and are then recruited to serve a nefarious organization. The video records the experience of one participant who is isolated and subjected to a series of brutal tests, training, and analysis.
Catalina Ouyang
Lyles & King, New York City
Catalina Ouyang is known for their grotesque, often unsettling sculptures dealing with notions of desire and the subjugation of women. The New York-based artist combines evocative materials like horsehair, rat bones, beeswax, and dried lotus root with sculpted body parts. Their new work Strange Attractor (2022) includes a video and a series of sculptures including four wall-mounted reliquaries. Filled with fetish objects, each reliquary features fragmented body parts based on paintings by Balthus of his 11-year-old model and muse, Thérèse Blanchard. Nearby sits a sculpted bed based on the one in Balthus’s The Victim (1938), depicting a lifeless nude figure who appears to be the young Blanchard. Instead of her body, two carved stone holy-water basins rest on the empty bed. Ouyang fills them with raw eggs preserved in vinegar, found objects, and bleach-soaked literary manuscripts. Together, the works provoke questions about desire, cruelty, and victimhood.
Dominique White
VEDA, Florence
Marseille-based artist Dominique White’s precarious sculptures evoke decaying shipwrecks dredged from the depths of the ocean. Taking slave ships as the site of construction for modern Blackness, her destroyed vessels dwell instead on the potential of an intangible, unmappable Black future. The artist describes her process as a ‘forceful collaboration’ withunstable materials loaded with history, such as heavily worn sails, tarred rope, and rotting dried palm leaves. VEDA shows her new sculpture To The Hunted, May You Continue To Be Their Worst Nightmare (2022) – five towering metal harpoons giving way to a menacing sargassum-like mass rising from the ground below. The rusted hunting spears symbolize the state. Measuring up to three meters in height, the weapons were inspired by Hydra, the seven-headed sea serpent of Greek mythology. Meanwhile, the fluid shipwrecked forms below – cast in crumbling kaolin clay – reference Blackness, which the artist sees as a formidable, unmeasurable entity that exists beyond state limitations.
Edgar Calel
Proyectos Ultravioleta
Steeped in sacred practices and ancient beliefs, Indigenous artist Edgar Calel’s work is a tribute to the Maya Kaqchikel community of the Guatemala highlands. His latest project, In Traces We Leave Over the Face of the Earth (2022) is a series of monumental paintings showing different scenes from the day-to-day life of Calel’s family, which revolves around their red double-cabin pick-up truck. The works are a meditation on the Mayan belief that family is akin to a living organism constantly adapting to meet its members’ needs. This idea of adaptability and the importance of supporting one another is embodied in their shared vehicle. Calel also shows raw wooden sculptures resembling cylindrical objects the family uses as external brakes for the car. Stained with tire marks, the sculptures display patterns resembling traditional Maya Kaqchikel textiles. The paintings and pillar-like forms invite viewers to pause and reflect on the nature of their own families and support systems.
Özgür Kar
Édouard Montassut, Paris
At Édouard Montassut’s booth, viewers are plunged into a conversation about death and loneliness between a group of animated corpses on video screens. Depicted on monitors standing more than five feet tall, four skeletons and one nude man are sketched in flat white lines. Titled The Undead (2022), this immersive installation by Amsterdam-based Turkish artist Özgür Karpresents the corpses as characters in a play. Filled with existential angst and dark humor – inspired by the MTV cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head – the work is a continuation of Kar’s preoccupation with society’s growing addiction to screens. Instead of presenting a clear narrative, the play loops, and the corpses’ musings become an endless blur of words echoing the dulling nature of mindless scrolling.
Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. photographs people from unusual angles, with their backs to the camera or with their faces partially concealed from view. The New York-based artist is fascinated by the idea of interiority, both within individuals and domestic spaces. By deliberately withholding information, he affords his subjects control over how they appear within the frame. Often a tension exists in his prints between privacy and the resistance to representation, and opening up and allowing vulnerability. On view at the fair is a new series of ethereal images, including tender portraits and a large sculptural work featuring a series of recessed, back-lit prints.
Beijing-based artist Wang Tuo deconstructs historic narratives and reimagines the past in complex cinematic video productions. His practice often investigates the historical context from which our present ideologies stem. Wang is particularly interested in shamanism and creating visceral experiences in which he transports viewers to other times and spaces. His two-channel video work The Second Interrogation (2022) tells the story of an artist and a censor who, after meeting at an exhibition opening, gradually question their respctive points of view about China's political system. By the end of the video, the artist has become a covert surveillant for the government, while the censor shows full understanding of the challenges artists van face. The work is inspired by seven performances (known as the 'Seven Sins') that took place at the seminal 1989 China/Avant-Garde Exhibition in Beijing, which was censored.
Top image: Sara Sadik, Il est trop tard pour chahed (detail), 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Crèvecœur, Paris.