As the first late-spring warmth reaches Europe, the art world turns its attention to two unmissable events: the Venice Biennale – whose eventful launch week just wrapped – and Art Basel’s flagship fair in Basel. Both draw the world’s leading artists, curators, collectors, institutions, and art lovers. This year, they have more in common than ever.
The connection between the two feels especially strong in light of Koyo Kouoh’s lasting influence. Kouoh, the Swiss-Cameroonian curator who shaped this year’s Biennale before her death in May 2025, was a part-time Baseler and deeply rooted in Basel's cultural life. She also served as a jury member for the inaugural Art Basel Awards. Her Venice exhibition, ‘In Minor Keys’, asks visitors to slow down and look to art for solace rather than spectacle. Themes of memory, identity, healing, materiality, and visibility run like undercurrents through her show, alongside a deep commitment to artists from the Global South and its diasporas.
Those same currents will run straight into Basel this June. Here are the artists exploring urgent topics and shaping conversations in Venice, all set to command attention on the fair floor in Basel.
On healing and the body
Guadalupe Maravilla (P·P·O·W, mor charpentier)
61st International Art Exhibition
Guadalupe Maravilla was 8 years old when he crossed the US border alone, part of the first wave of unaccompanied children to do so during the Salvadoran Civil War. Decades later, a cancer diagnosis prompted him to look back to his roots and the healing rituals of his ancestry. From this has come a compelling practice built around healing. Maravilla’s ‘Disease Thrower’ series incorporates gongs, shrines, and headdresses made from found materials and activated during sound ceremonies. The powerful, colorful El Brujo Disease Thrower (2024), on view in Venice, is a throne that includes objects collected while retracing his original migration route.