Art Basel commissions Creative Time for public art project in Basel

Art Basel has commissioned Creative Time, the New York-based public art institution, to produce its first international project, titled "Basilea." The initiative will launch on May 23, 2018, and culminate during Basel art week (June 11–17). Artists Lara Almarcegui, Isabel Lewis, and the architecture studio Recetas Urbanas, led by Santiago Cirugeda, will collaborate with local and international volunteers. Recetas Urbanas will construct a multipurpose civic structure from locally sourced and secondhand materials through open workshops. Almarcegui, who represented Spain at the 55th Venice Biennale, will create a gravel installation around the structure, symbolizing the amount of gravel extracted from a Basel quarry. Lewis will lead workshops exploring notions of self and community. After the fair, the structure will be relocated to a participating local organization. Elvira Dyangani Ose, curator at Creative Time, stated that the project's guiding principle is that everything can be made by anyone using accessible instructions.