What?
Art Basil is an annual show, now in its third year, made of thousands of basil plants and basil-inspired paintings.
Why?
In May of 2020 Kirsten developed an overwhelming desire to grow basil plants that has not yet abated.
The Story
In May of 2020, while living in a geodesic dome in a Brooklyn backyard, Kirsten became obsessed with growing basil. Soon she had three hundred plants, 18 basil portrait paintings, and an evening garden gallery in Bed-Stuy.
The next year she produced Art Basil 2: 1000 Basil, featuring a thousand basil plants that were grown in donated five-pound coffee bags and nourished with homemade bokashi compost. The basil plants were accompanied by twenty-four abstract paintings of overlapping, stylized basil leaf designs, a basil soundscape room, and the thirty-foot-long Painting of 1000 basil, itself lined with basil plants.
The latest iteration, Art Basil 3: Basil Temple, featured a colorful outdoor playspace and a temple-like interior gallery, in which hung a 30’x5’ work, Repeat, comprising tens of thousands of accumulating, stylised basil motifs in white oil pastel upon white plastic. Repeat was accompanied by hundreds of basil plants, walls covered with colourful basil paintings, buckets of pesto, basil cocktails, and a counterpart work, Basil Field: another large-scale, 15’x30’ basil watercolour, which was laid on the floor. Participants were encouraged to take their shoes off and sit on the painting, transforming the artwork itself into an interactional, social space. The following morning, the painting—bearing witness marks of footprints, smears, dried spills, and cigarette ash—was legible as an artefact that attested to the social dimensions of the show.
