Olamiju Fajemisin at the Basel Social Club

BY THE TIME I arrived in Basel on Tuesday morning, I was already late, just as I was late to file this report. As I prepared to disembark the overnight FlixBus from Amsterdam, I watched in amusement as collector Alain Servais live-tweeted the “shocked” reactions of List gallerists as a band of Customs unceremonious (if performatively) officers descended on their cabins. The plays were so entertaining that I didn’t even notice I had dropped my passport, which would add additional scheduling wrangles to an already busy few days. Between the big fair, its little satellite sisters List and June, and the highly anticipated second edition of the Basel Social Club, everything had opened up, and everyone involved was present. Exchanging compliments, complaints as pleasures and false promises to “get a drink”, the usual crowd of art world professionals (now unmasked!) at the same time, even if all for the same reason.

The atmosphere of a “back to basics” was palpable, if indirectly evoked. This year’s fair marked a relatively full return to the season. “It is SO busy,” was the general consensus, a testament to the (belated) easing of pandemic-related travel restrictions that in previous years had barred entry to entire demographic groups (especially, those from Asia from the east). Yet others lamented that it was “too slow,” and not ironically, given that Covid-19 appeared to be running out just in time for a recession, indeed like clockwork.

“Look at my working class tan!” boasted a gallerist proudly, lifting his sleeve to reveal the pallor of his shoulder contrasting with his deeply golden bicep. Everyone seemed to agree on one thing: the heat waves were unsubtle and sharp, even oppressive, and it was no better outside than in the air-less inside, and yet I didn’t care. don’t remember specific uses of the term “global”. global warming” or “climate crisis” outside the context of odd jobs. Those who didn’t cool off in the mosquito-infested Rhine (I personally didn’t let myself go, although it put me in the majority, because Art Basel had gone so far as to distribute branded swim bags to all participating merchants) drank ice cold water bottles of Sprudelwasser and glasses of crémant in the panopticon-like courtyard in the center of the main fair, where I, too, with artist Deborah Joyce Holman (on the artist card I got entry as +1 ), fueled by the classic veal sausage, mustard, and bun combo, taking turns consulting our menu and using it as a fan. In the brief tour we managed before dinner, we loved Diamond Stingily’s sculptural and moving-image installation at Unlimited, Sonia Delaunay’s color field paintings at Zlotowski Gallery, liquid-filled sculptures recreated from Senga Nengudi to Thomas Erben and the framed drawings of Vaginal Davis behind curtains at the Isabella Bortolozzi Gallery.

That evening, my dinner plans were cut short as I rushed to collect my passport from the bus station. I had planned to end the evening at the Basel Social Club, which in its second year had moved from a 1930s villa with swimming pool and garden, just a little outside the city, to the former brutalist installations of the factory of Thomy mayonnaise, something of a gift from a developer the organizers had befriended the previous year. By 11 p.m., however, the massive new room was already full, too full to even allow the press to enter. Instead of moping at home, I was dragged (not without regret) to ROUINE, a cozy bar with a dance floor, arm in arm with curators Mohamed Almusibli and Cory John Scozzari, and artist Shahryar Nashat. There, we drank vodka sodas, I drunkenly congratulated incoming Forde co-directors Asma Barchiche and Mina Squalli-Houssaini, and had my annual catch-up with my Basel-born ex-boyfriend before the night does slide quickly into the morning.

Co-organized by a quartet of art world professionals—Robbie Fitzpatrick, Dominik Müller, Yael Salomonowitz and Hannah Weinberger—Basel Social Club, now in its second year, was billed as a “social space for the art” and is strictly not a fair, although it closely encroaches on the territory of the main events at Messeplatz (unlike last year, it is now only a few minutes away by tram). Inside the factory’s cavernous silos, hundreds of unlabeled works of art covered every available surface, between which hangout areas such as the self-explanatory champagne-serving “Whisper Bar” are scattered like favors. A new intervention by Margaret Honda and Galerie Molitor of multicolored translucent window foils projected marbled jewel tones onto long dining tables resembling wedding receptions, which were tended by a local culinary collective. In the central courtyard, under a floodlit disused mayo-vat, a taco truck hung out with vegetable and meat options at CHF6 apiece. (I had two mit fleisch– they were good, spicy, if a little soggy.) Back inside, somewhat unintelligible performances by PRICE and Mykki Blanco served as the pre-game for the main midweek party in Kaschemme, hosted as per tradition by House of Mixed Emotions, where Juliana Huxtable and Pe Ferreira turned the dense crowd of a mob into a sweaty, smelly, suited heap, and outside, stage darlings Sitara Abuzar Ghaznawi and Shamiran Istifan were nice and smoky. I greeted artist and party co-organizer Jan Vorisek, congratulating him on the success of the evening, before heading home in an overpriced taxi.

Looking for a moment of respite, I made the annual tram pilgrimage to the Fondation Beyeler with its beautiful gardens, which this year hosted simultaneous and equally depressing solo exhibitions of Doris Salcedo installations and paintings. of Modena by Jean-Michel Basquiat. (I was struck by the misplaced excitement and libidinal consumption of the majority of visitors to the shows that considered the legacy of drowned refugees, patterns of exploitation, and racism in general.) At Schaulager, another traditional venue of the offsite fair week, their twentieth-anniversary exhibition, “Out of the Box,” paradoxically framed highlights from the collection’s temporal media holdings in their own little projection boxes. People were delighted with Janet Cardiff at Museum Tinguely (“a must see,” insisted Istituto Svizzero director Joëlle Comé), but I chose to visit the Kunsthalle Basel instead, where P. Staff had an enigmatic presentation (and soothing) of immersive installations and moving images, and Tiona Nekkia McClodden performatively activated her exhibition of wall sculptures and leather belts stamped with lines of prose that she read aloud. But I was almost late again: it was the day of Frauenstreik, as always during fair week, and a dense crowd of purple-clad feminists cluttered the road from Messeplatz via Clarastrasse to the Kunsthalle, bringing the city to a standstill, and fair enough – Swiss women’s suffrage was not unilateral until 1990, so I couldn’t complain too much. When it was all over, I went to the mountains.

— Olamiju Fajemisin