Written by Joas Nebe. The Kunstmuseum Basel presents the first major solo exhibition in Europe of moving-image artist Cao Fei (born 1978), whose formative years in China coincided with the cautious economic opening under Deng Xiaoping and whose artistic imagination bears traces of semi-legal Western imports alongside early imitations of Western consumer goods and their visual language. Growing up amid such hybrid material cultures, Fei began producing Hip Hop videos in the early 2000s,...

If I told you I have spent $10,000 in the past 3 years on application fees with a 97% rejection rate for my applications, would you believe me? Also, if I told you I have participated in 50 exhibitions on my curriculum vitae over many years, and the top 15 exhibitions, in terms of quality, had no application fee, would you believe me? Well, as unbelievable as these statements may sound, they are both true. My 97% rejection rate is not due to poor presentation, bad writing, an incohesive CV,...

Abir Almajed is a text-based artist who has exhibited in Europe and the Middle East. She describes her textual works as “a space to allow her grief to be present, by visualizing elegies or inner-dialogues; she is unafraid to show her vulnerability by intentionally adding elements of imperfections to her work in order to embrace the works, inviting viewers to sit with what is usually unspoken”. These text-based compositions in Abir Almajed’s portfolio are created with paint (with sometimes an...