Esther Austin in Basel, Switzerland For Art Basel

The Artist Georges Yammine

After The Art Basel Investor Forum concluded on Wednesday evening, June 18th, the Forum's Founder and CEO, Alain Bindels, provided us with complimentary tickets and escorted those interested to Volta Basel - https://www.voltaartfairs.com/basel.

We made our way from the venue to Volta, continuing conversations and fostering relationships. We walked across The Rhine River, and I learned about the history of Basel, bordered by Germany and France. The pace was much more relaxed than in London, and I felt a strong sense of belonging.

Volta Basel was a huge open space, its white walls allowing for more expansiveness to showcase the incredible artwork on display. Below is a brief yet compelling conversation I had with Georges Yammine, a Lebanese artist. His paintings feature bullets, symbolizing his experiences during years of war and reflecting the transformation of his personal pain through the imagery of bullets.

BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH GEORGES YAMMINE https://www.georgesyammine.com/about

Thursday, 19th June After a much-needed and well-deserved rest, I took a 30-minute walk to meet Zee West. Today was dedicated to further exploring Basel and visiting more exhibitions. Zee West is an extraordinary woman, entrepreneur and creative strategist with experience in Fintech, Healthtech, Defi, and IoT Security. She was also a speaker at The Art Basel Investor Forum.

We met at the Basel Social Club, a free non-profit art event. The day was extremely hot and the venue was very busy. Before we entered the building, a guide provided us with historical context about the event, mentioning that there were 100 rooms for us to explore, This venue had been a former private bank Vontobel which is in the center of Grossbasel. The exhibition spanned more than 100 rooms in this iconic building, transforming the vast location into an immersive tableau vivant.

After that, I attended Art Basel, the International Art Fair at Messe Basel, on Thursday, the 19th. It was a vast and expansive venue brimming with incredible creativity, almost overwhelming in its artistic expression across numerous mediums. The messages and voices were profound, with each piece inviting personal contemplation, introspection, and even awe.

Art is such a catalyst of so many things. Not only a wonderful form of expression, of celebration, tellers of stories, capturing emotion, capturing the essence of life beyond what we can see and even understand, a representation of the essence of life itself. Art the embodiment of dreams, of trauma, of life, of death and rebirth. I'm looking forward to exploring more of the world of art.. Art is something that will keep the dreamer dreaming, allow for the activist to show, to be a mouth piece, for those who are silenced, to allow whatever form of art they choose, to be their mouth piece, for those in pain to release it into the creative baskets of life, for others it will be a canvas of beauty, texture, structure and yet for others it will be the representation of nothing at all, but the simple activity of allowing whatever wants to come through to simply do so.

A big thank you goes out to Zee West