NASO x Mathqaf: Art Basel 2025
Naso Art Journal and Mathqaf Collaborate on a Special Feature Highlighting Art Basel 2025
As Art Basel returns to Basel this month, anticipation builds around the growing presence of the SWANA region at the fair. With the upcoming launch of Art Basel Doha in February 2026, this year’s edition underscores a broader institutional shift that reflects a deeper engagement with the region’s artistic and intellectual landscapes.
Central to this shift is the launch of the inaugural Art Basel Awards—a new initiative marking a milestone in the fair’s 55-year history. Honouring 36 visionaries across nine categories, the prize acknowledges the cultural labour of artists, institutions, curators, patrons, and storytellers shaping the future of contemporary art. Among this year’s honourees are Meriem Bennani, Lydia Ourahmane, and Mohammad Al Faraj (Emerging Artists); Nairy Baghramian (Established Artists); Jameel Arts Center (Museums & Institutions); and Negar Azimi (Media & Storytellers).
Collectively, this year’s honourees highlight not only the strength of individual practices, but also the networks of cultural work—artistic, institutional, and discursive—that are shaping how the region is seen and understood today. What follows is a closer look at the artists, institutions, and storytellers whose contributions are helping to define the SWANA region’s growing presence within the global art world.
Emerging Artists:
The inaugural edition of Art Basel Awards brings together a generation of leading voices from the SWANA region whose practices are redefining the potential of contemporary art. Their recognition affirms the importance of narratives rooted in memory, material, and movement—shaped by local geographies and transnational histories
Meriem Bennani
Meriem Bennani (b. 1988, Rabat) works across video, animation, sculpture, and installation to explore the hyper-mediated realities of diasporic life. Drawing from reality TV, telenovelas, sci-fi, and the online realm, she constructs what she terms a ‘hyperactivity of genre’—a visual language marked by fragmentation, humour, and saturated critique. Grounded in Moroccan life and extending across digital and reimagined worlds, Bennani’s speculative narratives confront border politics, surveillance, and global systems of power through satire and play in an increasingly networked world.
Lydia Ourahmane
Lydia Ourahmane (b. 1992, Saïda) is a multidisciplinary artist whose research-driven practice spans video, sound, sculpture, performance, and large-scale installations. Grounded in personal and collective experiences, her work centres on questions of spirituality, migration, and the residual structures of colonial power. Through material transformation, intimate encounters, and narrative abstraction, she explores how systems of power inscribe themselves onto individual bodies and lived environments. Through her projects, Ourahmane offers a compelling articulation of resistance, where the intimate and political are never separate.
Mohammad Al Faraj
Mohammad Al Faraj (b. 1993, Al-Ahsa) is a Saudi artist, film director, and writer, living and working in Al-Ahsa. Through a multidisciplinary practice, spanning photography, video, installation, and drawing, Al Faraj constructs fictional and non-fictional narratives by worldbuilding, drawing inspiration from knowledge, people he encounters, and experiences. Raw, organic, and familiar, his body of work relies on natural materials and found objects from his surroundings, such as dates, palm fronds, sand, and stones. As a socially and environmentally active artist, Al Faraj aims to cultivate environmental awareness and coexistence between human life and nature.
Established Artists:
Nairy Baghramian
Nairy Baghramian (b. 1971, Isfahan) is considered as one of the most critically acclaimed sculptors working today. Based in Berlin since 1984, her practice spans sculpture, installation, photography, and drawing—exploring the tensions between material, form, and the fragmented body. Often working in cast metals, silicone, or resin, her abstract compositions are reminiscent of prosthetic forms and industrial processes, yet resist fixed meaning. Through spatial disjunctions and fragmented anatomies, her work foregrounds vulnerability and adaptation, particularly as it relates to gender, diaspora, and displacement.
Institutional Anchors:
Since opening its doors in November 2018, the Jameel Arts Centre has established itself as a leading non-profit institution within the Gulf’s contemporary art ecosystem. The Centre offers a dynamic programme spanning solo and group exhibitions, research-driven projects, artist commissions, public events, and educational initiatives. Its open-access arts library and emphasis on cross-disciplinary dialogue position it as both a cultural hub and a platform for critical exchange.
The institution’s programming often addresses urgent questions around environment, material practice, and regional knowledge systems—exemplified by initiatives such as Anhar: Culture & Climate, which supports artists and collectives working at the intersection of sustainability and cultural production.
This year, the Jameel Arts Centre is being recognised at the inaugural Art Basel Awards with a medal in the Museums & Institutions category, honouring its “groundbreaking exhibitions and fostering of innovative contemporary works.” The award signals not only international recognition but also a broader shift in how cultural infrastructure across the SWANA region is valued. As a platform committed to cultivating emerging voices and fostering new modes of engagement, Jameel Arts Centre plays a vital role in linking regional practices with global conversations.
Media & Storytelling:
Global perceptions within the art world are largely shaped by critics and writers, and the significance of this is reflected within the inclusion of a “Media & Storytellers” category within the inaugural Art Basel Awards. This year, Negar Azimi, Editor-in-Chief of Bidoun, has been honoured as a medalist within the category.
Negar Azimi is a distinguished writer, editor, and curator, whose work has had significant influence upon perceptions of contemporary SWANA art. In addition to her work on Bidoun, Azimi’s work has appeared within a number of well-established publications, including Frieze, Artforum and The New York Times. Azimi’s work, both written and otherwise, continues to shape and challenge narratives surrounding Southwest Asian art on the global stage.
In addition to receiving her award, Azimi will take part in the inaugural Art Basel Awards Summit on June 20, 2025. The summit will convene leading art-world figures to explore emerging trends and the evolving structures of the global art market.
Altogether, Azimi’s award and her upcoming role in the Art Basel Awards Summit highlight the expanding impact of SWANA voices in foregrounding regional narratives and actively shaping the structures of global art discourse.
Key Takeaways:
As Art Basel 2025 unfolds, it’s clear that the fair is not simply spotlighting artists from the SWANA region—it is actively recognising their role in shaping today’s global cultural landscape. The inclusion of voices like Meriem Benani, Lydia Ourahmane, Mohammad Al Faraj, Nairy Baghramian, and Negar Azimi speaks to a growing acknowledgment of the region’s nuanced and evolving contributions to contemporary art.
Equally significant is the acknowledgment of institutions such as the Jameel Arts Centre, which highlights the importance of the cultural infrastructure that supports and advances artistic practices. By celebrating both creators and the institutions that nurture, promote, and critically engage with their work, the Art Basel Awards emphasises the vital ecosystems that underpin how regional SWANA art is produced, circulated, and understood on a global scale.
With the Art Basel Awards foregrounding artistic, curatorial, and critical work—and the forthcoming launch of Art Basel Doha in 2026—the region is increasingly positioned as a vital force in contemporary art. This shift is not merely symbolic; it signals a structural transformation in the global art world’s flows of influence.
By celebrating these honourees, Art Basel 2025 acknowledges the SWANA region not as a passive participant, but as an essential contributor to global contemporary art.