Art Basel 2026’s most memorable scenes were not confined to the booths. In Basel this week, the fair’s social life unfolded in parallel with its exhibitions, from a myth-laced film starring Bianca Censori to a dog named Tina wandering Unlimited.
Kanye West, who also goes by Ye, visited the fair to see his wife, the artist and architect Bianca Censori, whose appearance in Unlimited drew attention through Vanessa Beecroft’s film *Untitled, Izanami* (2025). Shot in a semi-abandoned hotel near Tokyo, the work draws on the myth of Persephone descending into the underworld. Censori’s role in the film includes a sequence in which she crawls through a corridor in minimal clothing, while her own outfit at the fair — a skin-tight bodysuit — became part of the spectacle around the event.
The Art Basel Awards dinner, held off Marktplatz, offered a different kind of theater. Curators, artists, and patrons gathered to toast nominees including Barbara Kruger in the icons category and Farah Al Qasimi in the emerging artist section. The winners are due in December. As guests departed, Massimiliano Gioni, the New Museum’s artistic director, arrived on a small bike and handed out his latest book, a volume on the history of the Venice Biennale. “I don’t think I was invited to the dinner!” he said, apparently in high spirits after a separate New Museum gathering where he had done the same.
Not all of Basel’s attention stayed indoors. Miami-based filmmaker Elsa Marie Keefe climbed nude into a fountain near the Mittlere bridge for a photoshoot tied to her presentation at Volta with the baselFLO platform. Keefe said her fine-art images treat each shoot as a performance and described her work as an exploration of the naked body through the female gaze. She is showing alongside Swiss artist Chantal Convertini, whose work also places the body in natural settings.
The Rhine, meanwhile, continued to function as Basel’s unofficial cooling system. Gallerists, fairgoers, and even staff swam in the river, with one colleague describing the experience as peaceful and “a great cure for a hangover.” Another detail from Unlimited added a final note of levity: Tina, a dog belonging to an Art Basel team member, roamed the section and appeared unimpressed by Ryan Gander’s “mouse-in-the-wall” work.
For all its market gravity, Art Basel still thrives on these side scenes — the ones that reveal how closely art fairs are tied to performance, social ritual, and the city around them.
