Janiva Ellis unravels the inherited fictions of history, identity and image at Kunsthalle Basel.
18 June 2026
In her first institutional solo exhibition in Europe, ‘Geneva’, Janiva Ellis transforms Kunsthalle Basel into a site of visual slippage, where meaning is never fixed, and certainty remains perpetually out of reach. Bringing together a new body of paintings, the Brooklyn- and Los Angeles-based artist draws from popular culture, art-historical traditions, and the fragmented architectures of collective memory to construct scenes that are at once seductive, unsettling, and darkly humorous.
Ellis’s practice interrogates the enduring myths that underpin dominant cultural narratives, exposing the contradictions, erasures and violences concealed beneath their surfaces. Working within and against the conventions of figuration, she stages encounters between visibility and disappearance, intimacy and estrangement, inviting viewers into spaces where interpretation remains fluid and unresolved.
Oscillating between painterly precision and raw, gestural energy, the works resist easy categorisation. Religious symbolism, landscapes and bodily forms emerge and dissolve across layered compositions that feel both deeply personal and broadly political. The exhibition’s title itself gestures towards ambiguity, echoing the artist’s own name while pointing toward acts of misrecognition and transformation.
With ‘Geneva’, Ellis offers a compelling meditation on how images shape our understanding of power, history and survival, and how painting can remain a potent space for questioning what we think we know.
This exhibition is on view at Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland until 9 August 2026.
