CURA.

With Revolt Against the Sun!, this year’s graduation exhibition of the bachelor and master students, the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW becomes the guest of the Kunsthaus Baselland for the tenth time. The presentation of new works by nearly 50 emerging artists continues the long-term collaboration at the Kunsthaus Baselland, located in the immediate vicinity of the Campus Dreispitz of the HGK Basel FHNW since 2024. To emphasize the special nature of a graduation exhibition in a leading art institution and in the education of artists, who are transitioning from the sensitive environment of the art academy to the challenges of working as professional artists, each year a renowned guest curator is invited to curate the exhibition together with Chus Martínez, head of the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW. Our 2025 guest is Margaux Bonopera, independent curator and head of exhibitions at the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles.

The title of this year’s graduation exhibition refers to Iraqi author Nazik al‑Mala’ika (1923 – 2007). Her poem Revolt Against the Sun (Thawra `ala al-shams) was published in 1947, and in 2020 an English anthology with the same title was released featuring 32 of her key poems, spanning over decades of her work. In the oeuvre of Nazik al‑Mala’ika Revolt Against the Sun means a revolt against imposed meaning, dominance, and inadvertently established conformity. There is no common subject that unites the exhibition as such, but the fact that all the works created by the participating artists—third-year bachelor and second-year master—embody a will to address the current states of our minds and bodies. All are concerned with how we can deal with the deep turbulences caused by war, climate crisis, inequality, digital alienation, identity fragmentation, and chronic anxiety. Can art offer some solace in this situation? Can we regain a sense of the self that can defy and contest the notions of the self constantly proposed by social media or the mainstream discourses on automated labor and the tasks machines are going to take away from us? Can art contribute to regaining peace?

What is interesting is that no sadness or sense of defeat runs through the exhibition and the works. From the current misery, artists and their artistic practices emerged not joyful but sober, able to face the trouble and invest in the different works as ways of gaining insight on some important issues:

– Emotions circulate through our bodies; we carry those emotions and share them, even without noticing them. Therefore, it seems fundamental to circulate positive emotions and experiences of hope that may motivate change.
– We need to move beyond the Modernist and colonial ideas of the individual human. Our bodies are not isolated and also not entirely passive. Technology is not there to shape us, we are also there to shape, modify, and adapt it to our current needs and values.
– Trauma, pain, and mental health are not only personal circumstances but ways of dealing with overwhelming processes that affect all of us as a group, community, and society.
– Also, art and artistic practice offer an incredible counterbalance to the toxic positivity of privately owned media. Art still embodies the common good, the public realm, the arena where we can openly discuss the future of our worlds.

The works presented in Revolt Against the Sun! are very different in the artistic languages used. The Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW does not encourage a single way of working, but the development of an eloquent and unique tongue in each case. What is fundamental to understand is the effort these young artists have undertaken in producing these new works: their trust in the democratic guarantees that define art as a right, a fundamental right that enhances our lives and our possibilities of reconnection to the collective spirit, opening pre-political spaces for thought and healthy dissent.

Text by Chus Martínez