在一组以“双唇与情绪面孔”为主题的视觉作品中，情绪成为画面的主角，而双唇则是最具表现力的细节之一。紧抿的嘴角、微张的双唇、轻启的笑容——这些细腻的唇部变化，传递出愤怒、迷茫、渴望或冷漠等复杂情感。当这些表情与柔和或阴郁的背景相结合时，画面仿佛在低语，讲述一段段未被说出口的故事。艺术家利用光影与色调，强调面部微妙的肌肉线条，使观者不仅“看见”情绪，更能“感受到”情绪的流动。这些作品并不追求完美的五官，而是在不完美中捕捉真实的情感波动。双唇，作为沟通与沉默之间的界限，也成为观众与画面情绪产生共鸣的入口。在这些面孔中，我们看见了别人，也或许看见了自己。

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.”