Ye, the controversial rapper and fashion mogul, occasional architect, and Trump supporter formerly known as Kanye West, was spotted earlier today at Art Basel. The flagship art fair in Basel, Switzerland, has its VIP preview days on June 16-17, and opens to the public on Thursday.
West was presumably there to support his wife Bianca Censori, an Australian artist who stars in Untitled (Izanami), a 2025 film installation by Vanessa Beecroft that is being presented at Art Basel Unlimited by Lia Rumma Gallery. The Milan- and Naples-based gallery is also showing pieces by Alfredo Jaar and Wael Shawkey at Unlimited, Art Basel’s section for large-scale artworks and performances that would not fit well in a cookie-cutter art fair booth.
On Tuesday, Untitled (Izanami) screened at Unlimited as part of an installation featuring one of the sets from the film. The all-white installation includes a large headless reclining female nude sculpture (Lying Body), four other sculptures of body parts (torso, leg, etc.), and a hospital bed. According to the gallery, the 25-minute film is set in a semi-abandoned hotel near Tokyo and reimagines the Greek myth of the goddess Persephone’s abduction by Hades.
This is not the first time Beecroft, an artist known for ambitious tableaux vivant-style performances involving large groups of female performers, often in various states of undress, has collaborated with Ye and others in his orbit. In 2016, she staged a performance—at Madison Square Garden, no less—to celebrate the launch of Ye’s (then still known as Kanye West) fashion line Yeezy Season 3 and his album The Life of Pablo. By that point Ye and Beecroft had worked together nearly a dozen times. A year later, in 2019, Beecroft shot promotional images for Ye’s then-wife Kim Kardashian’s shapewear line.
