Paris is burning. Literally. Paris is burning to the ground amid the protests that have taken over the capital in recent weeks, but Art Basel Paris can’t stop (and won’t stop), even after art students blocked access to the Louvre. We could see this as a Marie Antoinette ‘let them eat cake’ moment (did you know she never actually said it?), or we could see it for what it is: an art fair. Yes, a luxury one, born in Switzerland, but one that took months of planning, with many workers already on the job and countless pieces already shipped, all of which is very hard to cancel at a couple of weeks’ notice. Maybe the best way through this dilemma is to put the protesters’ demands on the table and show as much solidarity as possible, because what is art without its people? And maybe that leads us to ask: who are art’s people? While you think about it, here are five proposals to check out.
Louis Vuitton Artycapucines Retrospective
This year, Louis Vuitton celebrates its Capucines bag with a retrospective on the Balcon d’Honneur of the Grand Palais, looking back on seven years of Artycapucines. Bags designed by fourteen artists will be shown alongside their artworks, in a display that aims to capture the spirit of a group exhibition. It is also a way to honour Louis Vuitton’s heritage as a trunk maker and packer.
The scenography draws on the worlds of the different artists — Alex Israel, Takashi Murakami, a long-time collaborator of the house, and the late Yayoi Kusama, Frank Gehry and Keith Haring — and on the aesthetics of art transportation: crates and structures that evoke a brushed-aluminium trunk and cotton canvas. The result is a meeting point between artworks and bags, both made to travel. Think Kusama’s Great Gigantic Pumpkin or Gehry’s fish-shaped lamps, each sitting next to the bag it inspired. The highlight will be an exclusive thirteen-bag collection inspired by Keith Haring’s instantly recognisable art, shown alongside a historic suitcase the artist drew on himself in the 1980s. Consider the fair a sneak peek: the bags won’t reach stores until January 2027.
Alice Diop x Miu Miu
For the third year in a row, Miu Miu is the official partner of the Art Basel Paris Public Program. This year, it has given carte blanche to filmmaker Alice Diop, whose work has won awards including the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and two Césars. Throughout her career, she has explored issues affecting Black people in French society, such as migration, violence and being pushed to the margins. For Miu Miu’s Art Basel project, she has curated Geste de Consolation, her first exhibition. It brings together artists such as South African photographer Zanele Muholi, choreographer Nadia Beugré, musician Angel Bat Dawid with her ensemble Sistazz of the Nitty-Gritty, and sculptor Simone Leigh.
Spanning choreography, sculpture, music, video installation and literature, the piece invites visitors to watch the performers and the images, to listen to the music, to see each other and, finally, to stand before Leigh’s almost five-metre-tall sculpture. The work is an interpretation of a powerful West African water spirit that has become an important figure for the African diaspora. The gaze here is not diluted but diversified, as diverse as the mediums and messages these artists want to get across.
Geste de Consolation (Gesture of Consolation) will be on view at the Palais d’Iéna, headquarters of France’s Economic, Social and Environmental Council and the venue for Miu Miu’s runway shows, from 21 to 25 October, with free admission. “I want my curation to centre on acts of consolation conceived by Black women artists, each active in their own discipline, to repair the fetishizing gaze to which centuries of art history have confined us,” says Diop. Her previous collaboration with Miu Miu was Fragments for Venus, the film she made in 2025 for the Miu Miu Women’s Tales series; the Art Basel project continues that collaboration.
Silencio Art Week
Who said there’s no room for a little party during a week full of art and culture? Don’t be so rigid! The club is full of art, from the outfits to the flyers to what actually happens on the dancefloor. Don’t believe us? Put on some heels and something nice and see for yourselves at Silencio, where art week lasts a little longer into the night. From 20 to 24 October, the space will host talks, screenings, performances and, of course, parties. The programme is curated by Samantha Ozer, creator of Mexico’s TONO festival, and includes activities with Kayode Ojo, Space Afrika, MJ Harper, Avalon Emerson, and even a Club Kid afterparty.
Pilar Corrias booth
London gallery Pilar Corrias brings a solo booth of new paintings and charcoal works on paper by American artist Christina Quarles, known for questioning the assumptions and ingrained beliefs surrounding identity and the human figure. Her paintings convey a sense of dismantling, especially of the preconceptions placed on the body and on our experience as subjects. The booth includes Stay Up Late to See the Light/ Stain’ Up Late to See Tha Light/ Staid Up Late to See Tha Light (2026), the artist’s largest stretched painting to date. It’s a triptych whose panels will alternate daily throughout the fair, revealing different orientations of the work.
Visitors will also see more large-scale paintings and a series of smaller charcoal works on paper. Both formats show Quarles’s playful way of creating tense, impossible bodies. They make viewers question what their own bodies could be, and the assumptions made about the first thing anyone sees of us. See Christina Quarles’s work at booth 0.B50 at Art Basel Paris, from 23 to 25 October.
Jordan Roth – To Think of the Tranquil Life of Things
To Think of the Tranquil Life of Things continues Roth’s earlier performance work Radical Acts of Unrelenting Beauty, which questioned the nature of perception. The new piece reflects on how the ordinary, everyday objects around us can hold memory, especially the memory of the lives that have passed through them. Its title comes from a passage in Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual. Roth was moving out of the flat where he had lived for fifteen years, and he realised how much of his life had happened there: marriage, children, and becoming who he really is, so he decided to document his different selves on the furniture he was leaving behind.
He made collages and printed them onto textiles draped over the objects, so the furniture looks as if it is about to be moved. The result is a new form that suggests stillness, makes you imagine the life each object has had, and at the same time invites you to sit down. Presented in collaboration with Design Miami, the installation will take place at the Hôtel de Guise, 72 rue de l’Université. It was designed by Adam Charlap Hyman, with artistic direction by Doug Lloyd.
