Inspired by Art Basel 2023 with KOKET’s Founder

KOKET founder with art installation at Art Basel

June brings to Basel, Switzerland, a powerful force of creative energy, art aficionados, and collectors looking to expand their private collections. Art Basel, with its unrivaled reputation as one of the world’s premier art fairs, has once again exceeded expectations at its 2023 edition. All together showcasing 284 galleries from 36 countries, creating breathtaking displays and larger than life installations. Meanwhile, Design Miami/ Basel brings the marriage of tradition and modern innovation to this year’s theme.

A personal history with Art Basel

My first visit to the world-famous Basel art shows was 14 years ago with my husband, an art lover to his core. I was a novice in the intimidating world of art, and I vividly recall walking through the corridors in fear of not understanding what I was looking at. Terrified that one of the stiff gallerists dressed in mismatched Avant-garde pieces and vibrant-colored eyeglasses would ask my opinion on a piece. The walk alone was stressful, not to mention the art jargon.

Fast forward to 2023, and I continue to walk the halls of Art Basel not as an artist, dealer, or collector but as a critic of what moves me.

As for my furniture collection, Women move me. Their bodies inspire my designs, their emotions name my pieces, while their role in the world drives my mission to empower.  At this year’s show, I was immediately drawn to thought-provoking female pieces at both Art Basel and Design Miami. I was touched on many levels, and every time I walked the show, a different emotion surfaced.

Could this mean I am on track to becoming part of the art world? Whatever my position or title is, I am now moved by art in its many forms, and I find myself being lured into pieces and becoming one with the message behind the artist’s mind. The pieces below are just some of the most memorable and perhaps could be influential in my future designs for KOKET.


Discover Pieces to Love from Art Basel 2023


Art Installation by Collette Lumiere for Art Basel 2023
Colette Lumiere // Recently Discovered Ruins of a Dream (1973-2023); Company Gallery NY

During the 1970s, Tunisian-born artist Colette Lumiere slept in numerous art spaces as a political act. She would lay down, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed, in piles of cream and pink fabrics. Staying for days in cases, Colette created these works of live art to reclaim the sleeping female body from its history as depicted by many male artists as a passive object of desire.

When Colette slept in an Art Basel booth in 1977, in a space by Branco Gallery, the artist brought an introspective work to the fair. Now 46 years later, Colette returned to Basel in a space presented by New York-based Company gallery. This time in a work by Cajsa von Zeipel in which the artist created a cast representation of a sleeping Colette as she was seen so many years ago. (Installation priced at $250,000).

Art Installation by Ursula Reuter Christiansen fro Art Basel 2023
Ursula Reuter Christiansen // Laporello (2013); von Bartha Gallery

Presented by von Bartha Gallery, German artist Ursula Reuter Christiansen’s installation, Laporello, showcases figures with powerful stories. This is a common theme for Christiansen, who wrote on her Instagram page, “Everything I do is transforming women’s stories, mostly, into art. Women I identify with. That is my incentive for my artistic production. I identify, and I transform”.

In Laporello, a group of women unites, each panel representing a generation and telling their own empowering story. Sensual and inspiring, the work of Ursula Reuter Christiansen is truly inspiring.

Keiyona C. Stumpf // Bossom buddy II (2018); Galleria Antonella Villanova

Art installation by Keiyona C. Stumpf for Art Basel 2023
Keiyona C. Stumpf // Bossom buddy II in glazed ceramic (2018); Photo courtesy of Galleria Antonella Villanova

Ceramic artist Keiyona C. Stump is often inspired by nature, a look we love!

“Nature isn’t just the foundation of our existence, we are “nature” and carry all its principles within us. If you comprehend the world as an entity, existing through continuous Transformation, in which all parts are an integral component of the whole, and in which all parts determine each other as well as the parts the whole, then (nature and man) have never-neither within nor without, neither as the observer nor as the observed-been separated from each other.” ~Keiyona C. Stumpf

Explore more Art Basel 2023 & Future Events at artbasel.com

Words by Janet Morais
Feature Image: Janet Morais, founder of Love Happens & KOKET, in front of Ursula Reuter Christiansen’s Laporello (2013) installation presented by von Bartha Gallery at Art Basel 2023.


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