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Calendar
Gemeinsam Kunst Bewegen
Until Tue, 10.3.26
Visarte Region Basel invites you to become a member now.
The more members Visarte Region Basel brings together, the more effectively it can represent and advocate for issues related to professional artistic practice.
This call is aimed at professional artists, independent curators, and architects who want to connect, network, and help create change. Now is the right moment: applications for membership are open until 10 March 2026. Visarte Region Basel looks forward to welcoming new members!
Marble Melodies Fiction Zone
Sat, 14.3.26, 11:00 – 18:00
Very last last play: 5:00 pm sharp
With contributions by Julia Grillmayr, Eva Kadlec, Numa, MPPO – Miraculous Priscilla Predator Organization
(with fridge & drinks)
In Marble Melodies Fiction Zone, Julia Grillmayr takes visitors beyond the threshold of a dazzling and frightening zone where otherworldly wonders open up speculative possibilities, enabling them to see “the world out there” in a whole new light. That’s where Eva Kadlec comes in, asking what stories do to our hearts. In doing so, she takes a closer look on grimdark, a popular genre and late-capitalist illusion in which violent transgression is considered revolutionary and trust merely provisional. At this point, it might be helpful to change the language. For by listening and humming along, other forms of emotional realities can be explored and experienced. With its extraterrestrial sounds, Numa promises more than just a soundtrack to the magical transformation of the narcissistic astrophysicist Wallace Neyton, as traced by the discreet non-governmental organization MPPO. It is the language of and to Supplice, a beautiful planet whose mystery cannot be unravelled by the human mind.
ARCHIV
12.2 – 7.3.26
Simon Berger | Stefan Winterle | Pascal Kehl
A temporary densification of positions that at once offers insight into the history of the art space and into different artistic strategies.
In February 2026, Artstübli – Kunst & Kultur presents an exhibition from its own archive. On view are works by Simon Berger, Stefan Winterle, and Pascal Kehl – three artistic positions that, in different ways, engage with image, structure, surface, and perception. The exhibition is not conceived as a retrospective overview, but as a deliberate re-constellation of selected works. Earlier pieces enter into a changed dialogue, shift their points of reference, and open up new perspectives on materiality and image construction.
Opening hours:
Thursday/Friday: 11 am – 6 pm
Saturday: 2 pm – 6 pm
Country SALTS: John Armleder
Solo presentation in the Remise
15.6.25 – 15.3.26
Geneva-based artist John M. Armleder (*1948) is a singular figure in postwar art and one of the most prominent Swiss artists of his generation. Country SALTS is honored to present Quicksand IV (2025), a newly commissioned, site-specific large-scale work. Join Country SALTS in celebrating this legendary artist at an opening event held in the presence of both the artist and the curators.
Opening on 15 June, 10 am–5 pm
Curators: Samuel Leuenberger and Yann Chateigné Tytelman
Address: Country SALTS, Hof Strickmatt, 4431 Bennwil
DUST IN LIGHT
13.3 – 22.3.26
Dipankar Das, Painting / Object, Basel
Ruth E. Herzka, Mixed Media, Basel
Rachel Kohn, Objects, Berlin
Regina Simon, Drawing, Basel
After six years and 15 exhibitions, balagan ARTS is bidding farewell to its long-standing premises due to renovations and will henceforth be activating different spaces.
balagan ARTS points to its upcoming spring exhibition at KOSMOS space, Venusstr. 7, Binningen (by the observatory). Visitors can look forward to a bright, spacious venue in a wonderful setting.
Three artists from Basel and one artist from Berlin approach the exhibition’s theme through drawing, sculpture, painting, and collage—each from their own perspective. Regina Simon and Ruth E. Herzka, with a Swiss-Austrian background, are members of Visarte Basel; Dipankar Das is an artist with Indian-Bengali roots; and Rachel Kohn, originally from the Czech Republic, lives and works as a sculptor in Berlin, is President of Berliner Künstlerinnen, and is involved with Faire share!. The vernissage will be accompanied musically by cellist Elisa Siber @elisa_siber (*1983, Vienna). She lives and works in Basel.
Programme
13 – 22 March 2026
Vernissage: Friday, 13.3.2026, 5:30 pm (open from 2:00 pm)
Elisa Siber: Solo Cello, 6:15 pm
Opening hours: Fri – Sun
2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
KOSMOS space, Venusstr. 7, 4102 Binningen (by the observatory) Tram 2 to Margarethen / Bus 36 to Kunsteisbahn and 10 minutes on foot.
Reserved parking spaces are available.
She/Here/Now
31.12 – 29.3.26
Annette Barcelo, Lorenza Diaz, Lena Laguna Diel, Pia Rosa Dobrowitz, Elisabeth Eberle, Corinne Güdemann, Inka ter Haar, Golnaz Hosseini, Georgine Ingold, Jeanne Jacob, Rosina Kuhn, Renée Levi, Karoline Schreiber, Judith Trepp
She/Here/Now places contemporary women painters at its centre and asks how female positions become visible today — and why structural inequalities within the art world continue to persist so stubbornly. The exhibition presents the diversity of current painting practices in Switzerland: from figurative narratives to abstract gestures, from personal visual languages to critical perspectives on social realities.
A central component of the exhibition is the archive of artist and curator Elisabeth Eberle, which has for years documented the unequal representation of women artists within the Swiss art system. In dialogue with the exhibited works, painting is presented here not only as an aesthetic practice, but also as a socio-political stance.
An accompanying mediation programme with guided tours, talks and workshops invites visitors to deepen their engagement with the exhibition’s themes and to bring together different perspectives.
Villa Renata
Socinstrasse 16
4051 Basel
info@villa-renata.ch
Fri 4-7 pm
Sat-Sun 2-6 pm
and on request
DUO
31.1 – 29.3.26
DUO an intervention by Andreas Schneider and Julian Salinas in the Garage Renata
in Basel from January 31 to March 29, 2026
The car is both a promise and a burden. It stands for freedom, mobility, and individuality – and equally for displacement, noise, exhaust fumes, accidents, and overload. Hardly any other object is so emotionally charged while at the same time so contradictory in its meanings.
With the intervention DUO, an artistic spatial and linguistic project is realized in the freestanding garage near Villa Renata in Basel, responding to this divergence. The sober, functional space – normally dedicated to parking a car – is transformed into a contemplative resonant space. Inside the garage, two identical words hang diagonally opposite each other in the room: AUTO, formed from red glowing LED light rods. Together they form a visual duo, mirrored toward one another, charging the space both physically and semantically.
The light sculptures enter into a rhythmic dialogue with language. Through a loudspeaker, a female voice speaks word pairs that echo the word AUTO – not, however, as one might expect in relation to the theme of the car or the garage itself, but deliberately detached from it. In doing so, the meaning of the word shifts fundamentally. Auto no longer functions as the designation of an object, but as a linguistic operator. As a prefix – for example in autoimmune, autonomous, or autocratic – auto refers to self-reference, delimitation, and internal logic.
Auto-.... describes processes that regulate themselves, protect themselves, or turn against themselves. In autoimmune, the self becomes a threat; in autocratic, power legitimizes itself; in autonomous, independence is asserted. The word marks an inward movement – a form of self-empowerment that simultaneously produces vulnerability and exclusion.
In this reading, AUTO stands for systems that become autonomous: biological, political, social. It does not denote mobility, but cycles; not freedom, but self-reference. The word carries an ambivalence – between protection and isolation, self-determination and loss of control. Understood in this way, auto becomes an abstract sign of a present in which structures increasingly retreat into themselves. The word loses its material weight and gains a conceptual density that is less visible, yet all the more effective.
Title – The starting point was the idea of pushing two cars side by side into the single garage – a deliberate overfilling of the intended space. This physical compression remained unrealized. Instead, two cars now appear as two identical words. A single garage displays a double car, shifting from bodies into words and visually and unexpectedly continuing the absurdity of automotive spatial claims on a linguistic level.
DUO 2026
Light and sound installation
Loop 5 min. 30 sec.
Spoken by Manuela Biedermann, actress
LED light rods, foil, cables, circuitry, relays, loudspeaker
300 x 600 cm / H 250 cm
Programme
Vernissage parallel to the opening of Villa Renata: January 31, 2026, at 6:00 pm
Film presentation Abhang, an experimental documentary film: February 14, 2026, at 5:00 pm
Fictional conversation with automobile manufacturer Emil Frey: March 29, 2026, at 4:00 pm
Finissage and closing: March 29, 2026, 2:00–6:00 pm
Operation of the intervention daily 07:00 – 19:00
objects of affection
1.3 – 26.4.26
Paintings by Anna-Lena Ruff — a painterly inquiry into selected objects from the estate of Hermann Reinfrank (1952–2023) — and an installation by the Association Verdre featuring originals by the artist.
Exhibition opening:
1 March 2026, 4:00 pm
(on view until 26 April 2026)
To set the tone, pianist Pio Schürmann will play the “green note”.
Concert: 6:00 pm
Still Leben – Laut Malen
15.3 – 26.4.26
Vernissage: 14.03.26, 18:00
Camille Lütjens, Cassidy Toner, Charles Benjamin, Gegen Nazis, Golnaz Hosseini, Irène Zurkinden, Isadora Vogt, Ivan Mitrovic, Jacob Schenck, Jan Kiefer, Lionne Saluz, Marie Lotz, Melissa A. Torres, Mimmo Haraditiohadi, Othmar Farré, Raphael Widmer, Selina Lutz, Viktor Korol, Yves Born
Words and theory are omnipresent in art as well as in everyday life, and they often make us doubt our intuition. The exhibition “still leben – laut malen” is dedicated to the brilliance of the image, metaphor, and the sense of sight.
Still life is a broad genre label, ranging from grave ornaments in ancient Egypt, to studies of nature, to vanitas paintings. The term highlights the ever-present simplification that makes interpersonal communication easier and possible. The exhibition shows that theory is only a fraction of reality, and invites artists to expand the “word” through the wide diversity of imagination. It is an initiative — a framework in which the agency of art is to be reflected on and discussed.
The accompanying mediation program offers different ways of strengthening one’s own intuition in relation to creativity, images, critical thinking, writing, and learning.
Kasernenstrasse 23, 4058 Basel
Mi–Fr: 15:00–18:00
Sa–So: 13:00–18:00
City SALTS: Uncanny Garden
26.3 – 29.5.26
Group exhibition as part of the Basel Dokumentartage
The group exhibition Uncanny Garden transforms City SALTS into a breathing parcours suspended between attraction and unease.
Visitors encounter doll-like beings, humanoid presences, anthropomorphic figures, and manifestations of artificial intelligence. Artistic forms guide them into the uncanny valley, where increasing resemblance no longer produces closeness but instead gives rise to discomfort.
In the Uncanny Garden, new connections take root – between us and the images we create of ourselves.
Uncanny Garden unfolds across the entire exhibition space and garden. Two new rooms are inaugurated. Following On Fire – Vulnerable Footage (2019), this group exhibition marks the second collaboration between SALTS and the Basel Dokumentartage festival.
«It’s The Real Thing – Basler Dokumentartage 5» is supported by the Swisslos-Fonds Basel-Stadt, Swisslos Basellandschaft, Pro Helvetia, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung, and Christoph Merian Stiftung.
Image © Paul Max Fischer
VIATORE von Andre Willi (FLURE)
19.1 – 1.6.26
Oslo-Strasse 10, 4142 Münchenstein (Freilager-Platz)
Traces are laid down through brushstrokes – a “calligraphic seismogram” of sounds drawn from the eponymous musical work by Pēteris Vasks.
Viatore tells the story of a wanderer who enters the world, grows, develops and falls in love, eventually reaching a certain maturity before leaving the world again. The “wanderer” breaks through the masonry into the corridor of the Oslo Studios, walks along it for a while, lives his life there, and then disappears again through the opposite wall of the corridor into the infinity of the cosmos.
Friday, 19 Jan, 1–2 pm (following the Meet & Eat at Cuisine Mondial) – a collective walk through the corridors with Andre Willi, coffee & cake
Saturday, 20 Jan, 6–7 pm (together with “The Others” at Cuisine Mondial) – a conversation in the corridor with Andre Willi and an apéro
Afterwards, the work can be seen in our corridors for an indefinite period of time.
Curated by Axel Töpfer, axel@sirenen.name
REWRITING REGION
20.3 – 5.6.26
What does regionality mean? How is a region constituted if we take into account the many entanglements of migration, memory, language, social relationships, and historical shifts? In that case, it can no longer be confined to a geographical place, but unfolds as a mobile, shifting formation. Which stories we tell about “our” region – what becomes visible through them, and who is rendered invisible – these and further questions form the focus of the workshop.
The workshop evenings take place at Literaturhaus Basel and are co-led each time by the author Eva Seck and an artist. The artists contribute thematic and conceptual input; building on this, Eva Seck develops writing prompts that are explored during the workshops. In addition, participants have the opportunity – based on the writing workshop – to attend a zine workshop led by the semi-anonymous queer collective Q.U.I.C.H.E at Kunstraum DOCK. Participation in the zine workshop is optional.
The results of the workshop series will become part of an exhibition at DOCK, which will be on view in DOCK’s shop windows from 27.06. to 24.07. The vernissage at DOCK will include a short reading from the texts created.
REGISTRATION
Directly via the registration form or via info@literaturhaus-basel.ch / by phone at +41 (0)61 261 29 50
COSTS
CHF 10*
*If you are not able to pay the course fee, please include with your registration a motivation letter (max. 1 page) explaining what interests you about the topic “ReWriting Region” and how you would like to engage with it through writing.
REGISTRATION DEADLINE
Thursday, 4 March 2026
Contributors and biographies:
Course lead, author: Eva Seck
Course lead, artist: Monika Dillier
Course lead, artist: Ana Vujić
Course lead, artist: Akwasi Glenn Asumadu
Zine workshop: Q.U.I.C.H.E. collective
Programme
Fri 20 March – Fri 05 June: WORKSHOP
A workshop series with Eva Seck, Monika Dillier, Ana Vujić, and Akwasi Glenn Asumadu, and the Q.U.I.C.H.E. collective
Fri 20 March, 7:00–9:00 pm: WRITING WORKSHOP AT LITERATURHAUS BASEL
with Eva Seck and Monika Dillier:
Existing short texts, media images, and personal material by Monika Dillier serve as a starting point to critically reflect on migration in connection with gender roles.
Fri 24 April, 7:00–9:00 pm: WRITING WORKSHOP AT LITERATURHAUS BASEL
with Eva Seck and Ana Vujić:
This evening explores personal stories of migration, mobility, and everyday experience “here” and “there,” making the diversity of the participants’ transnational biographies visible.
Fri 29 May, 7:00–9:00 pm: WRITING WORKSHOP AT LITERATURHAUS BASEL
with Eva Seck and Akwasi Glenn Asumadu:
Akwasi Glenn Asumadu initiates an engagement with everyday narratives of Black communities in Basel. In doing so, it becomes tangible how belonging, migration, and regional identities can be renegotiated through personal perspectives.
Fri 05 June, 4:00–7:00 pm: ZINE WORKSHOP AT DOCK
Together with members of the Q.U.I.C.H.E. collective, which uses zines as an important medium in its own work, participants can discover the possibilities of zines and receive inspiration for designing small publications.
Fri 26 June, 7:00 pm: VERNISSAGE
Shifting Matters
21.3 – 28.6.26
What remains when everything is in motion? In the group exhibition Shifting Matters, Vanessa Billy (*1978), Maya Bringolf (*1969), Jannik Giger (*1985), and Zimoun (*1977) explore the question of how we relate to different materials, environments, and to one another in today’s world. Their works invite viewers to experience change and movement as ongoing processes that connect past and present.
The four artists each set distinct emphases: Bringolf works with assemblages made from found and recycled materials; Billy examines the connection between body and earth; Zimoun translates movement and rhythm into acoustic resonance; and Giger explores transformation through sound, gesture, and image.
Together, their works create a multilayered interplay of forms, sounds, and perceptions, in which instability, renewal, and the potential of continuous change become tangible.
Curated by Patrizia Keller (Director, Kunstraum Baden) and Chantal Molleur (Co-founder and Head Curator, White Frame).
Information and events
Opening Reception:
Friday, 20 March 2026
6:30 pm Doors open
7:00 pm Welcome by Steffi Kessler, City Councillor Exhibition introduction by Patrizia Keller, Director of Kunstraum Baden, and Chantal Molleur, Co-founder and Head Curator of White Frame
Art at Noon:
Thursday, 26 March, 12:00 pm
Children’s Workshop “Shaping and Transforming”:
Thursday, 16 April, 2:00 pm
Screening:
Thursday, 23 April, 7:00 pm
A short film program curated by Chantal Molleur
Music Performance – HOAX Quartet:
Saturday, 2 May, 5:00 pm
The HOAX Quartet presents RELIC, its new program for four electric guitars, including a composition by Jannik Giger.
International Museum Day
Children’s Workshop “Shaping and Transforming”:
Sunday, 17 May, 2:00 pm
Artist Talk:
Thursday, 28 May, 6:30 pm
Vanessa Billy, Maya Bringolf, and Jannik Giger in conversation with the two curators
Art at Noon:
Wednesday, 10 June, 12:00 pm
Curators’ Tour:
Sunday, 28 June, 2:00 pm Exhibition tour with both curators