Art Basel 2025 | Unlimited U2
Public Days: 19 -22 June
Chosen as the only female italian living artist by the curator Giovanni Carmine, Marinella Senatore presents We Rise by Lifting Others (2023). Renowned for her large-scale light sculptures, imagined as stages for the community, Senatore unveils a 34-metre-long installation, first presented at NOOR Festival Riyadh under Jérôme Sans’ curation. Reimagined for Art Basel, this iteration features a refreshed palette and new textual messages.
Rooted in community dialogue, We Rise by Lifting Others holds profound significance. The sculpture’s illuminated phrases – “We Rise by Lifting Others” (attributed to American lawyer and orator Robert G. Ingersoll) and “I Contain Multitudes” (from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself)– were initially chosen by female inmates in Florence and residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Naples, respectively.
By reusing these quotes, originally inspired by communities so far removed from that of Basel, I am connecting these two starkly contrasting realities together.
Marinella Senatore
By recontextualising these statements, Senatore bridges social divides, reinforcing her commitment to uniting communities through art.
Senatore’s practice interweaves collective rituals, public engagement, and the transformative power of community. Her work merges historical tradition with contemporary discourse, reinterpreting the Baroque-era use of ephemeral architectural displays as a form of storytelling and social commentary.
Her luminaries and neon works place community and the transformative power of art and participation at the centre. They are energy-catalysing works aimed at celebrating individuals and communities through phrases of empowerment and the power of light, such is the case of her latest ceiling luminaries. The energy of light is also captured by her collages: musical scores, photographs, sketches and moving silhouettes are extrapolated from moments in her community workshop and practice, among them the School of Narrative Dance, her best-known participatory project born in 2012, which for more than a decade has involved 8 million people in 23 countries.
Luminarie are like ethereal architectural structures that can build the idea of the plaza even when this plaza doesn’t exist,” Senatore reflects. Like their 17th-century counterparts, her installations are often located in public spaces. Yet, by relocating this communal form into the context of an art fair, We Rise By Lifting Others encourages audiences to reconsider the space as one of connection, dialogue and shared experience.
With this presentation at Art Basel Unlimited, Senatore establishes her status as one of the prominent artists of her generation, working at the intersection of community, activism and contemporary visual arts.
Her ability to transform historic tradition into dynamic, participatory experiences ensures her work remains both visually striking and socially resonant – a beacon of light, both literal and metaphorical – in an increasingly divided world.
