Each year at Art Basel, the Statements sector promises bold solo presentations by emerging artists from around the world. This year, 18 international galleries will mount new works in the sector. The following artists are a selection of up-and-comers – born between 1983 and 1990 – who use humor, technology, and traditional and industrial materials to present their takes on our complicated times. 

Elaine Cameron-Weir
JTT, New York City

Symmetry, sleekness, and industrial materials define Elaine Cameron-Weir’s futuristic sculptures. At JTT’s booth, the Canadian-born, New York–based artist presents three new pairs of works. The first duo features an impressive material feat: In them, concrete is expertly formed atop steel lattices to appear just like Baroque draped fabric. Adorned with neon lights, the works resemble hyper-modern sci-fi crucifixes. A second set of sculptures uses found barrels as plinths for enigmatic arrangements of electric candles and aluminum-cast bones, while the final pair resembles a set of fire doors with ominous, stainless-steel and glass portal windows lit from below.

Liu Yefu
Magician Space, Beijing

Underpinning Liu Yefu’s elaborate videos and mixed media installations is his dark sense of humor and scrutiny of political ideology. At Magician Space’s booth, the Beijing-born artist’s ambitious video work Hehemeimei (2019–21) weaves miscellaneous narratives about Chinese folk culture, globalization, and their effects on modern life. Using Beijing street scenes to inspire a futuristic landscape, Liu invents ecological shifts, made-up wars, and petty conflicts between old men playing chess to tease out the complex relationship between personal values and national missions. Nearby, the installation Ja Lama singles out Sven Hedin (2021) – comprising readymade objects such as walnuts, plates, and a clay turtle – references a scene from the video, which imagines a meeting between the work’s titular characters.

Diane Severin Nguyen
Bureau, New York City

The centerpiece of Diane Severin Nguyen’s presentation with Bureau is the artist’s first major video work, Tyrant Star (2019–20). Set in Vietnam and divided into three chapters, Tyrant Star depicts highly saturated shots of jungles and interiors, set to a lovelorn voiceover adapted from traditional Vietnamese folk poetry. Stars are a constant signifier throughout the video – at times representing political symbology, wildlife, and pop-stardom. Outside the screening room, Nguyen presents abstract photographs of materials which, divorced from context, recall ruptures and wounds. In addition to her solo presentation at Art Basel, the artist’s first solo institutional show, ‘If Revolution is a Sickness’, opens at SculptureCenter in New York City on September 16.

Rose B. Simpson
Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

To make her anthropomorphic glazed-ceramic sculptures, Rose B. Simpson devised a unique onomatopoeic technique called ‘slap-slab’, in which she throws clay against the floor on a diagonal until it becomes lean and malleable. Then she incorporates twine, steel, wood, and leather to mold androgynous forms – often with elongated necks – which are inspired by family, gender, and her Pueblo Indigenous roots, among other subjects. At Jessica Silverman’s booth, she presents a series of new sculptures, including Daughter (2021), which sees the form of a child balanced on the back of its kneeling parent – both figures armed with weaponry and assessing their surroundings alertly.

Diamond Stingily
Queer Thoughts, New York City

An accomplished artist and writer, Diamond Stingily uses her memories of growing up on Chicago’s West Side to express her thoughts about economic issues, racial identity, violence, girlhood, and suburban life though poetry and art. Readymades are a recurring element of Stingily’s minimalist sculptures. In the 2016 work Kaa, for example, she used Kanekalon hair and barrettes to represent spending time at her aunt’s hair salon, while her 2014 book Love, Diamond was based on the her own childhood diaries. For Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms in June 2020, Queer Thoughts presented Stingily’s project Bitch, You Gone Die (2020), which included plastic trophies adorned with phrases related to economic disparity. This year, Stingily returns as the gallery’s featured artist with mixed media works including Kaas as Water (2021) – a sculpture made from fish hooks and 183 meters of Kanekalon hair – as well as a lenticular hologram of Black Jesus, entitled Who Gone Pay For This (2020).

Top image: Diane Severin Nguyen, Tyrant Star (video still), 2019. Single channel video, sound, 15 mins. 50 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Bureau, New York City.