Bisa Butler 是当代纤维艺术领域中最具标志性的艺术家之一，她以鲜艳的布料、精细的拼布技法和深刻的叙事性，重新定义了肖像艺术的可能性。她的作品常以非洲裔美国人为主角，通过色彩与图案的巧妙拼接，呈现出丰富的文化身份与历史记忆。在分享她的创作热情时，Bisa 表示布料不仅是材质，更是一种语言，它承载着她家族的故事，也连接着整个非洲侨民的精神根源。她对色彩有极强的敏感度，每一块布的选择都蕴含象征意义，既是美学判断，也是一种尊重与再现历史的方式。Bisa Butler 的艺术不仅展现了个人风格，更是一种文化宣言——她用针线与拼接讲述那些在主流叙事中被忽略的生命与荣耀，让沉默的历史在织物中再次发声。
Usually when a museum is flooded with water, something has gone seriously wrong. But at the Fondation Beyeler just outside the Swiss city of Basel, the flooding of the museum is all part of the show: a new site-specific installation called Life by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.
The artist has removed one side of the Renzo Piano-designed building (with the architect’s blessing) and let the feature pond—usually separated from the climate-controlled interior by a large glass wall—into the museum. Visitors can navigate the waters, which are up to 80cm deep, using a series of walkways that run in and out of the building. At night, the interior is lit up with blue light.
Eliasson has also dyed the water a fluorescent green and filled it with pond plants, including water lilies and shellflowers selected by the landscape architect Günther Vogt. The water has been coloured using uranine, an organic dye that is commonly used to observe water currents, and which Eliasson has used previously for his Green River (1998) work where he dyed rivers in cities such as Stockholm, Tokyo and Los Angeles.
In an accompanying artist statement, Eliasson writes: “Together with the museum, I am giving up control over the artwork, so to speak, handing it over to human and non-human visitors, to plants, microorganisms, the weather, the climate—many of these elements that museums usually work very hard to keep out.”
The southern side of the building will be open to the elements for the duration of the show, which ends in July. Eliasson writes that “even if no human visitors are in the space, other beings—insects, bats, or birds, for instance—can fly through or take up temporary abode within it.” This possibility is very much part of the work, with the artist adding that when he first spoke to the museum’s director Sam Keller about ideas for the show, he thought to himself: “Why don’t we invite everyone to the show? Let’s invite the planet—plants and various species”.
The show is open 24 hours a day. “Visitors can access the installation at any time. After 9.30pm they do not need a ticket,” says a spokeswoman. She adds that, in terms of non-human visitors, so far there have been “insects, spiders, ducks, a goose and cats.”