A person might be considered ‘convivial’ if they are energetic, friendly, and enthusiastic, but the word goes back to the Latin, simply meaning to live or dine together. Curator Stefanie Hessler was thinking of this root and its potential applications when conceiving this year’s theme, ‘Conviviality,’ for Art Basel’s Parcours sector, which, as always, places artworks in the Swiss city’s public spaces. ‘This social, ecological, technological, political moment raises questions of how we live together, and also how certain decisions will be made from a bottom-up perspective, rather than a top-down one,’ she says.
This reflection is informed and enriched by the fact that Parcours is spread across Basel: Passersby encounter artworks as they go about their days. From Miao Ying’s paintings and simulations exploring reciprocal training between humans and AI, to Truong Cong Tung’s ‘garden’ installations featuring sound and video, the works explore how humans interact with each other and their environments. ‘They also include our relationship to the natural world and the cultural ecosystems we form part of, including ritual, myth, and storytelling,’ says Hessler. ‘How we create meaning, but also how we express our beliefs in public space, in architecture, in the way we create places and opportunities for gathering.
For many artists, conviviality is a prerequisite to making work. ‘The art world is a social construct; it’s a field that depends on relationships. Some artists work collectively and collaboratively – their process is literally based in conviviality,’ says Hessler. The artists below, all featuring in Parcours, offer their takes on what the word means – and how it informs how they live and work in the world.
Kader Attia, Untitled (Rainsticks) (2024) on view at UBS-Geschäftsstelle, Aeschenvorstadt 1
For his installation Untitled (Rainsticks) (2024), the Berlin-based, French-Algerian artist was keen to create an immersive environment for both gaze and body. ‘Conviviality means porosity in terms of artwork: It’s the idea that we need to open our body and mind. From this porosity, a certain reciprocity will emerge,’ he says. He chose to place a group of rainsticks on stands that allow them to rotate and make relaxing, watery sounds at different times.
His approach to displaying art emphasizes a return to the physical in a hyper-digitalized world. ‘The artwork exists in a place of visibility where human beings have to go with their bodies to experience it. When you invite people to see artworks, you withdraw them from the attention economy,’ he says. Building this kind of interaction has political and social connotations, too. ‘The human is a gregarious subject – resisting the difficulty of life by being together. Conviviality, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t going to a party, taking drugs, jumping around. It is reciprocity, which means listening, being open to all difference – and, particularly today, it is the vital cement of society.’ A former restaurant and bar owner, Attia appreciates the role of drinking and dining in fostering togetherness, but says he also makes space for conviviality in his role as a professor at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. ‘The classroom conversation opens up new ideas, new perspectives – moving away from your own sphere and towards the other.’
Nicole Coson, Somewhere Within Here (2026), on view at KLARA, Clarastrasse 13
Six hundred aluminum-cast shells sourced from an oyster farm in the Philippines dangle on chains suspended from the ceiling in Nicole Coson’s installation
Somewhere Within Here (2026). The grid-like structure references aquaculture methods that have long fascinated the Filipino-born, London-based artist. ‘They’re both functional and strangely beautiful, and they speak to the relationship between people and the natural environment,’ she says, explaining that visitors are encouraged to walk through the piece as if they were exploring ocean depths.
Although Coson makes much of her work herself, her studio is set in a creative complex that houses more than 200 other such spaces. ‘The building is home to artists, architects, fashion and furniture designers, jewelers, writers, photographers, hairdressers, and filmmakers, creating a sometimes dizzying environment in which diverse practices can coexist, inform, and occasionally inspire one another,’ she says. Over the years, she has collaborated with people she’s met there; currently, she is working with a furniture designer on a series of room dividers.
Her practice has also included events called ‘Food Stories,’ which trace her family history across the Silk Road, so it is no surprise she is fond of cooking as a way to express love and appreciation. ‘It’s an opportunity to bring people together in a way that feels relaxed and meaningful,’ she says. ‘As the world becomes increasingly divided, making a conscious effort to come together feels more important than ever. Gathering with people, whether at an exhibition, on a dance floor, or around a dining table, reminds us that we exist in relation to one another, and that simply making time to be together can be a meaningful act of resilience.’
Pélagie Gbaguidi, Fragmentation (2024), on view at Kirche St. Clara, Claraplatz 6
Pélagie Gbaguidi’s Parcours work – a huge set of broken-up textile works titled Fragmentation (2024) – was created as part of a university research project and inspired by a reflection on the medieval Apocalypse Tapestry in Angers. Being surrounded by students helped her frame the question at the heart of the piece, which is to understand what apocalypse means today. ‘First, you need to address the question to yourself, but it’s evident you then need to address that discussion to everybody,’ she says. From her studio in Brussels, the Dakar-born artist works on pieces that tap into collective memory and trauma – finding meaning, beauty, love, joy, and a desire for humanity. ‘The body of the world has a belly, and the pain is in the belly. We are all connected with the belly of the pain, and in it you can find the joy of life, the way you want to dance,’ she says. ‘Movement is a basic element of common language. It carries the choreography of the individual and social.’
A self-defined modern-day griot, or West African storyteller, Gbaguidi feels she is a conduit for bigger narratives. ‘My practice is to create community through my artwork. My drawings are a small part of the process, a residue. The process is making relations: It’s the information I receive in a conversation, as an encounter, when I’m walking down the street, when I hear the birds. Everything is part of the work,’ she explains, adding that she also loves to cook and have people over as a way to ‘give a space of hope’. ‘Conviviality, for me, is how we can carry this poetry of life.’
Amol K. Patil, Burning Speeches (2025), on view at Volkshaus Basel (entrance via Schafgässlein)
Much of Amol K. Patil’s multidisciplinary work reflects on India’s caste system – his own community, the Dalit, has long been marginalized at the bottom. The Mumbai-born artist’s practice is intrinsically collective: ‘At the beginning, I thought I’d make everything myself, but then I realized my work is about talking about my own community,’ he says. Sometimes that means making people who live in a colonial-era prison-turned-housing complex into film subjects; often, it entails collaborating with script writers, singers, and musicians, as with some of the works he is showing at Parcours.
Burning Speeches (2025) consists of a radio playing a continuous conversation as it dissolves in clouds of smoke – radio was a way to protest censorship in India through the power of underground networks (in Basel, the work is staged in a disused basement bar). ‘Dalit artists have this art form called Powada, which they used to perform in public spaces, for protest. Now they can’t, because they can get arrested,’ he says. ‘I use this space to show that people can meet underground and share with each other. A lot of people are part of my projects now: electricians, carpenters – the relationships make the work possible.’ Now living in Amsterdam, Patil often has to explain what the Dalit community is – an exchange of ideas that happens via anything from reading poetry to cooking. ‘Food brings us into deeper conversations – discussing what kind of food our community used to eat, which dishes you can eat with your hands. It’s nice for people to want to know about it and learn,’ he says. ‘Food is about relationships.’