The highly anticipated edition of Art Basel Unlimited, a pioneering platform for large-scale artistic production, returned last month, under a curatorial vision of Ruba Katrib, the Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at MOMA PS1.
Katrib places historic figures alongside contemporary voices, shifting the focus of contemporary monumentality, and instead of celebrating it as power, she embraces it as a means of making lesser known narratives visible. Across architecture, textiles, sculpture, and installation, the works invite us to look towards intimacy, vulnerability, collective memory, and timely socio-political themes. Featuring 59 monumental, large-scale, immersive projects and landscape works from 66 international galleries, here are some of the standouts that drew the attention of Ivona Mirkovic, reporting for hube, from Basel.
CHRIS BURDEN
L.A.P.D. Uniforms, 1993
(born 1946 in Boston, Massachusetts; died 2015 in Topanga, California)
Chris Burdens scaled up policemen uniforms, displayed on the wall, like paper cut-out dolls, came in response to the Los Angeles riots that followed multiple police officers involved in the violent beating of a Black motorist, Rodney King. The garments, deliberately oversized, give an authoritarian presence that is intensified when several are installed together in a visual cordon. L.A.P.D. Uniforms is a strong and still very relevant commentary on the mechanisms of power and control, reflecting Burden’s long-standing social and political consciousness.
ANDREAS LOLIS
Army of Scarecrows, 2026
Hand-carved marble, metal components
Andreas Lolis improvises construction of rural scarecrows into meticulously carved marble sculptures. By translating fragile, temporary forms into enduring stone, Lolis explores memory and quietly honors labor and everyday ingenuity while challenging conventional hierarchies of monument, permanence and heroism.
GEORGE ROUY
Procession, 2026
Oil on canvas; 230 × 400 × 4.5 cm
George Rouy’s soft focused faces and blurred bodies, capture the perpetual transformations and abstractions of the body in a contemporary moment. Procession, created in response to the idea of clearing the mind as a part of the process of experiencing the painting itself, opens a super sensory space in which humanity mirrors itself and through which notions of carrying, collective care, and community are explored.
BRUCE NAUMAN
Dead End Tunnel Folded into Four Arms with Common Walls, 1980
Plaster, wood; 79 × 490 × 498 cm
Bruce Nauman’s complex composition, uses a range of media to explore communication, the body, and human experience. He disrupts and provokes active viewer engagement, by frustrating orientation and movement, and by generating psychological discomfort and disquiet. Propped on wooden planks, the four radiating arms create a space that is simultaneously architectural and deeply psychological. Nauman’s non-functional dead end, reminds viewers that physical space and the simple act of walking into an experience of uncertainty, can profoundly shape perception.
QIU SHIHUA
Untitled, 1999
Oil on canvas; three parts, 180 × 1,103 cm overall
Untitled (1999), the largest triptych created by Qiu Shihua, represents his unique approach to landscape painting rooted in Daoist philosophy. The work invites the viewer into a contemplative, meditative state where landscape unfolds as an experience. Its visibility is continuously shaped by light and the viewer’s perspective, emphasizing the essential interplay of presence and perception.
Words and photography by IVONA MIRKOVIC
