Art Basel 2024 — the Eco-artists to Watch
By Erin Duxbury & Roland Dupuy — April 2024
This year we propose you add a couple of names to your must-see list. Artists whose exploration and interrogation of sustainability and the natural world help foster a broader conversation about the intersection of art and environmental consciousness.
Ai WeiWei
Ai WeiWei, born in Beijing in 1957, is an artist whose work needs no introduction. The exiled Chinese artist’s prior work has ranged from triptychs of him dropping invaluable Han dynasty Urns to Lego brick portraits of political prisoners. 2022’s ArtBasel saw a Lego depiction of the Last Supper, with WeiWei’s image taking the place of Judas - positioning himself as the disruptor the art world (and the Chinese government) believe him to be.
As an outspoken climate activist, Weiwei created a series of rusted iron sculptures, modeled on the roots of endangered tree species encountered while working across communities in Brazil, resulting in Roots (2019). A jarring manifestation of the existential threat deforestation poses to indigenous populations, the structures impose themselves outside of their natural context reflecting Weiwei’s contempt for multiple government policies of mass deforestation.
Speaking to The Statesman in 2022 about the climate crisis, WeiWei asked the question “what can artists do? We can reflect upon the more fragile side of human beings, the side that has room for feelings and aesthetics. This side is the most vulnerable, and the most breakable."
WeiWei’s work will be exhibited at Art Basel 2024 by several galleries, including Berlin’s neugerriemschneider.
Tacita Dean
Tacita Dean is one of the most intriguing artists on the environmental art scene today. Born in Canterbury in 1965, she has worked with various media over the years, most notably film, photography and painting. Her arresting, larger-than-life artworks have earned her numerous accolades over the years, such as a Turner Prize nomination in 1998, and a Hugo Boss prize in 2006. Works such as 2012’s FILM, created for London’s Tate Modern museum, have conceptually dealt with themes of artistic integrity and process, while immersing the viewer in an entirely new space within the film reel itself.
Dean is deeply inspired by the British landscape in which she grew up — the sea, the hills, and the sky manifest in various forms in almost all of her works. And her life story weaves its way into her practice, too — speaking to The Guardian in 2018, she stated that “all artists are led back to autobiography. It’s not conscious, but it happens.” Now based between Berlin and Los Angeles, Dean continues to explore environmental themes such as deforestation and light pollution.
Her work has been exhibited at Art Basel through London-based Frith Street Gallery, and New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery.
Olafur Eliasson
Born in 1967 in Copenhagen, Olafur Eliasson is best known for his large-scale installation work centered around placing his viewers at the forefront of natural phenomena. Using sculpture, photography, paintings and film to create his exhibitions, he finds a fresh way to discuss the climate crisis, exploring humanity’s interactions with nature.
In large-scale installations such as The Weather project (2003), light, temperature, sound and even artificial weather were experimented with to enable viewers to engage with the environment. Creating a juxtaposition between the art inside the building and the changing weather of the city of London (as this piece was exhibited in the Tate Modern), Eliasson pushed for awareness from his viewers, commenting that it is “crucial for us to create change in our lives to protect our planet,” but knowing those who have not been confronted with the reality of climate change in their everyday lives can be disconnected from the consequences of human actions.
His appointment in 2019 as a Goodwill Ambassador for renewable energy and climate action by the United Nations Development Program is a testament to Eliasson’s work not only in the art world, but in supplying portable solar-powered lamps to replace fossil-fuel lighting in communities without electricity through his social business ‘Little Sun’.
Eliasson’s work was a highlight of Art Basel’s 2018 and 2019 editions, shown by a number of galleries including New York’s Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Reykjavík’s i8 Gallery.
Subodh Gupta
Subodh Gupta, born in 1964 and based in New Delhi, is a contemporary multimedia artist best known for his subversions of everyday objects found throughout India. Bicycles, milk pails, tiffin tins or even lunchboxes have all been used throughout his work, transforming their original forms by playing with scale and repetition. Cooking the World, exhibited at Art Basel 2017 by Hauser & Wirth, uses a collection of cooking utensils with the artist seeing them as a metaphor for food and the way it has traveled across cultures and countries.
His art does the same - seeing massive successes at art shows such as the Venice Biennale and at auctions. Saat Samundar Paar (Across the Seven Seas) (2008), A painting indirectly commenting on class inequalities and migrant workers sold for 34 million rupees at auction in 2008 (approx. 863 000 US Dollars at the time). Proceeds from the auction went to a fund for victims of catastrophic flooding in Gupta's home state of Bihar.
His more recent depictions of forest fires in The Amazon rainforest titled Lonely City (2019) were born out of the artist’s exasperation in seeing the destruction of the natural world. Speaking to Bharati Chaturvedi from Art World, Gupta shared “When I saw the photographs of the fires in the Amazon, I felt so sad, so angry,” choosing to create large-scale paintings in the style of Western landscape painters Thomas Moran or Ansel Adams. Understanding fire’s destructive impact anywhere in the world Gupta’s work is abstracted away from its Brazilian origin, focusing on the voyeuristic nature of witnessing the natural world’s destruction at the hands of humanity.
Maya Lin
Maya Lin, born in 1959, is an American artist who describes herself and her practice as existing within boundaries, “a place where opposites meet; science and art, art and architecture, East and West.” Winning a national competition with her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built in Washington DC, she often incorporates themes of memory into her practice.
Best known for her environmental work, Lin’s art explores her relationship to the natural world, building on her early understanding of human impact - a theme becoming more urgent in her work as the ongoing climate crisis devolves. In Eleven Minute Line (2004), she built a giant worm-like structure in Knislinge, Sweden, to explore two and three-dimensional space, connecting prehistoric forms from America and Europe to contemporary life.
An ongoing project titled What Is Missing, begun in 2009, is a testament to the artist’s longstanding commitment to raising awareness about the destruction of habitats and biodiversity loss. Within the project Lin rallies for solutions to protect species and significantly reduce climate emissions - dedicating her art to be a catalyst for positive change.
Lin’s work is shown through Pace Gallery, and was featured as part of Art Basel’s digital edition in 2020.
🏔 Journey Through the Beating Heart of the Alps
Switzerland
❄️ Andrea Juan Brings Art & Biology Together
Antarctica
🇩🇿 A Beacon of Eco-Urbanism in a Desert Oasis
Algeria
⚡️ Shocking the System: Classic Cars Enter the Electric Age
The Open Road
💚 Safeguarding the Future of the Riverbed Jade
Aotearoa/New Zealand
🏙 Gothenburg: Rewriting the Future of Mobility
Sweden
🍷 Urban Wineries Show Us How Production Can Evolve
United Kingdom
⌚️ Watches Making Waves in Ocean Conservation
The Seven Seas
🌻 In Toronto, Championing a Slow Fashion Revolution
Canada
🖼 ArtBasel 2024 — The Eco-Artists to Watch
Switzerland
🤖 Sustainable Fashion Isn’t an Oxymoron & AI Will Prove It
The Digital Realm
🇵🇪 A Local’s Guide to Lima’s Superb Sustainable Spots
Peru
♻️ Central Saint Martins’ Next-gen Fashion Saviors
United Kingdom
☀️ Green Light’s Guide to Berlin, Capital of Cool
Germany
🇮🇸 The Perfect Low-impact Day Out in Reykjavík
Iceland
By Roland Dupuy & friends
Est. 2023, London
Book 1 - Hope in Motion - Available soon