From rising stars to internationally acclaimed names, Art Basel 2026 offers an unparalleled opportunity to discover some of the most exciting artists shaping contemporary art today. Bringing together 290 galleries from 43 countries and territories, the world’s leading art fair returns to Basel from 18 to 21 June 2026 (with Preview Days on 16 and 17 June), showcasing everything from museum-quality historical works to cutting-edge contemporary and digital practices.
This year’s edition features ambitious large-scale commissions by Nairy Baghramian and Ibrahim Mahama, a newly expanded Premiere sector dedicated to recent artistic production, and a host of standout presentations across Unlimited, Feature and Statements. Amid the vast programme of Art Basel, Art Basel Unlimited and peripheral fairs, Lee Sharrock selects seven artists whose work is generating particular excitement in the art world: Nicola Turner at Annely Juda Fine Art, Koray Ariş at Öktem Aykut, France-Lise McGurn at MASSIMODECARLO, Lily Bunney and Elleanna Chapman at Basel Social Club, and Timur Si-Qin at SOCIÉTÉ. Together, these artists offer a compelling snapshot of the diverse voices, materials and ideas defining contemporary art in 2026.
1. Nicola Turner will unveil three new sculptures with Annely Juda Fine Art at Art Basel art fair which refer to the stages of life. Nativitas, Vita, Mors, Latin for Birth, Life, Death, is a common philosophical or artistic motif used to capture the complete cycle of human existence. Each stage is represented by a different sculpture. Navitas features a vintage medical bowl with Shetland, Hebridean and Jacob wool spilling from its interior, much like a birth. Attached to the wall, the bowl and its contents hang in three-dimensional space and confront the viewer.
Vita is a winding form that stretches from its foundations on a vintage medical trolley towards the ceiling and down to the floor. 360cm in height it could be seen as an over-sized anthropomorphic or animalistic form. The medical trolley legs invoke, for the artist, experiences of medial operations throughout her life.
Mors is a hanging form that appears to teeter in the high corner of a space. Giving the impression of floating, it could be interpreted as a spirit-like form, alluding to the after-life.
Turner is currently exhibiting Time’s Scythe at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and will have her solo exhibition, I Tear Secrets from Your Yielding Flesh, will open at Annely Juda Fine Art on October 1st 2026.
2. Koray Ariş will exhibit with Istanbul gallery Öktem Aykut for the first time at Art Basel. Ariş will debut new work Strings, a suspended sculptural environment created from leather and wood that invites touch and movement, extending a foundational sculptural language into a sensorial, spatial experience.
3. France-Lise McGurn DEE-TOUR at MASSIMODECARLO
France-Lise McGurn will be presenting pop-up exhibition DEE-TOUR at DOMUSHAUS in Basel from 15 to 21 June. DEE-TOUR was developed alongside new work for a solo exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts, opening in August 2026. In early 2027, McGurn will begin a two-year commission for the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia.
France-Lise McGurn (born in Glasgow in 1983) evades the boundaries of a traditional picture plane, eschewing the limits of her canvases by extending the imagery directly onto the gallery walls and furniture brought into the space, displacing her subject and creating an immersive environment. Instead of approaching a static painting, the artist activates the composition allowing the figures and forms to be seen as though in a field of vision.
- Teaspoon Projects presents Lily Bunney and Elleanna Chapman at Basel Social Club 2026: The Office
For Basel Social Club 2026, Teaspoon Projects, a nomadic curatorial project, presents a new collaborative presentation by London-based artists Lily Bunney and Elleanna Chapman. Responding to this year’s theme, The Office, the project looks at work as a system of visibility, hierarchy, performance, desire, exhaustion, and control.
Bringing together pop-cultural icons, political satire, rhinestones, romance, and digital image making, Bunney and Chapman consider how public femininity is shaped by production and consumption. Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears, Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton appear as figures through which labour, glamour, class, exploitation, and institutional power become painfully visible.
- Timur Si-Qin exhibits Mariposita with SOCIÉTÉ at Art Basel Unlimited
Art Basel Unlimited 2026, the Berlin gallery SOCIÉTÉ is presenting Mariposita, a new immersive installation by artist Timur Si-Qin. The large-scale work is based on 3D scans of a Renaco tree and its ecosystem in the Peruvian Amazon, translating roots, plants, insects, and water reflections into a spatial installation composed of stainless steel and moving-image elements.
With Mariposita, Si-Qin inaugurates a new body of work focused on the Peruvian Amazon, which will continue at SOCIÉTÉ in November 2026. At its core is the question of the “pristine” — untouched natural environments that are increasingly disappearing in an era of climate crisis and biodiversity loss. Through the use of digital technologies as a means of respectful and non-invasive documentation, Si-Qin understands artistic reproduction as an act of attention and ecological connectedness.
