Though this massive sculptural installation literally comes wearing bells and whistles, Anne Samat’s The Unbreakable Love…Family Portrait (2025), in the Meridians section, might go missed by visitors admiring the metaphorical bells and whistles of Beeple’s flashier Regular Animals nearby. Still, Samat’s sculpture deserves your attention. The work presents a personal story for the artist, depicting three of her sisters. (Samat is the eighth of ten children.) Since 2019, Samat has split her time between Kuala Lumpur and Upstate New York; her mother, two brothers, and eldest sister have been her main support system as she pursued her art. In the past five years, these four members of her family have passed away. Three of her sisters—the ones depicted—have since stepped up to fill in the void, with her youngest being “the glue that keeps everyone together,” as Samat told ARTnews during the fair’s VIP preview.
At the center of the work is Samat’s mother, “the spine of everything,” with a depiction of the artist, seen as a young girl. Whenever Samat was experiencing one of life’s difficulties, she would call or visit her mother, who would start the conversation by asking, “What is the problem?” That conversation “was a safe zone for me,” Samat recalled, saying that she often felt like she would revert to her younger self in these conversations. “My mother once told me, no matter how far you go, no matter how high you fly, stay humble, stay kind, and spread love.”
That’s what Samat hopes to accomplish in Art Basel Miami Beach with this installation. The sprawling work combines table-loom woven pieces, hand-painted rattan sticks, rakes, plastic swords, keys, wine corks, pipe-clamp brackets, washers, and much more. Samat sources most of her materials from a salvage yard near her home in Cold Spring as a way to bring to the fore the overlooked materials of everyday life—and to save them from ending up in a landfill. “I see my work as a bridge between the old and the new, combining centuries-old [techniques of] weavings with new unconventional materials,” Samat said.
