Manal AlDowayan, The Awakening of the Recline, 2026
Sabrina Amrani, Madrid

In her new series, Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan plays with a classic art-historical motif – the reclining nude – with characteristic incisiveness. On three linen tapestries, shapes recalling female bodies lounge, framed with loose fabric. Touches of acrylic paint create shadow and structure. The tapestries hover between abstraction and realism: a body is distinguishable yet always transforming, stretching, and mirroring itself. Heads seem to emerge but are blurry enough to suggest that these shapes embody all women – and the way their bodies are seen, peeked at, hidden, desired, and consumed. The Awakening of the Recline calls upon the power of regaining agency. J.A.

Lynda Benglis, Elephant Necklace Circle, 2016
Pace Gallery, New York, Berlin, Geneva, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Seoul, Tokyo

A towering figure in postwar sculpture, Lynda Benglis has spent decades redefining gesture, materiality, and the body through radical forms. Elephant Necklace Circle (2016) comprises 37 hand-wrought ceramic works that pulse with physicality and imagination. Arranged in a circle within the booth, the ‘Elephant Necklaces’ embody Benglis’s concept of the ‘frozen gesture,’ suspending a moment of movement in space. Coiled, spiraling, and irregular, the forms read as what the artist calls ‘extrusions of life’: part mammoth trunk, part umbilical cord, part memory made tangible. Glazed to a glossy black sheen and shaped by hand in Taos, New Mexico, where Benglis lives and works, the sculptures retain the immediacy of touch, their surfaces rippling as if still in motion. P.S.

Idris Kahn, Time Present, Time Past, 2025
Victoria Miro, London, Venice

In his works, UK-based artist Idris Khan has long explored notions of repetition and memory – creating panels of layered Arabic script and musical notation rendered in jewel-toned pigments and sacred geometrical proportions. At Art Basel Qatar, Victoria Miro presents new works by the artist, who this time layers pigment and then hand-inscribes each panel with Arabic text in gold leaf. Script is repeated and overlaid until language and symbol dissolve into form, and figuration blurs into abstraction. Taken together, the multiple panels become a site of still contemplation. K.B.

Yunchul Kim, Matterphoric Archives, 2025
Barakat Contemporary, Seoul

Yunchul Kim, who represented South Korea in the 2022 Venice Biennale, straddles the boundary between art and electronic music. Known for his elegant and uncanny kinetic works that transcend art, philosophy, technology, music, and cosmology, his practice reflects rigorous research and a constant drive to explore materiality. His project, inspired by the latent potential of materials lying dormant in Qatar’s ancient strata and seas, will be presented by Seoul’s Barakat Contemporary in the gallery’s first appearance at an Art Basel fair. The presentation, made up of strata gel ‘geological hearts’, will respond to changes in temperature, humidity, and light, interacting with kinetic devices to evoke the slow, gravitational rhythms of time. P.L.

Shigeko Kubota, Duchampiana: Video Chess, 1968–1975
Fergus McCaffrey, New York, Tokyo

Born in Japan, Shigeko Kubota developed a singular practice at the intersection of technology, performance, and conceptual art. A member of the international Fluxus movement in the 1960s, Kubota positioned experimentation, chance, and collaboration at the core of her work. Duchampiana: Video Chess (1968–75) lies at the heart of her sustained dialogue with legendary artist Marcel Duchamp – an exchange that feels newly resonant as the Museum of Modern Art in New York opens a major Duchamp retrospective in April. Combining electronically manipulated imagery, sound, and sculptural elements, Video Chess transforms documentation into an immersive installation, where chance, movement, and art-historical reflection unfold in real time. P.S.

Slavs and Tatars, Simurgh Селф-Хелп (Self-Help), 2023
Raster, Warsaw

Slavs and Tatars once again co-opt symbols of power, belief, and transition, conceptually transforming them into something more hopeful. In their presentation here, an eagle is central ­– a figure long burdened with associations of empire, sovereignty, and nationalist power. Recast as the Simurgh – a gender-fluid, mythic bird drawn from Sufi thought and Persian literature – it stands for collective wisdom, spiritual elevation, and shared responsibility rather than domination. Part of the group’s ongoing ‘Simurgh’ cycle, the presentation is anchored by Duck’s Blood (2024), a woven rug that slips from wall to floor, doubling as a site for seated gathering. Surrounding wall works and ceramic vessels extend this logic of thresholds and translation. Punchy yet critical, political yet ambiguous, the presentation operates as a platform: one that rethinks power beyond conquest and towards collective wisdom. A.R.