Exhibition Dates June 12, 2026 – September 13, 2026
Exhibition Opening June 11, 2026, 7:00 PM
Exhibition Address Kunsthalle Basel, Basel Museum of Art Steinenberg 7, 4051 Basel, Switzerland
Kunsthalle Basel presents the opening of Shuang Li’s first institutional solo exhibition in Europe, “Alliance” on Thursday, June 11th, 2026 at 7 p.m.
The exhibition is generously supported by Octone Foundation , Cc Foundation, and Simian Foundation, with additional support from Esther Maria Heer-Zacek.
Shuang Li, Alliance, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Basel, 2026, photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
The temperature drops rapidly, light shifts from bright to dark, and the air grows heavy, as if it had gained weight. A tornado seems to be building in the exhibition spaces of Kunsthalle Basel. In her first institutional solo exhibition in Europe, Alliance, Shuang Li (b. 1990) turns to the search for storms not only as literal and physical natural phenomena but, more importantly, as metaphors for the highly mediated realities and digital forces that shape and permeate our everyday lives.
Entering Alliance means embarking a journey: a state of motion on unstable ground unfolding across the exhibition spaces. Amidst fragmented landscapes, billboards, flickering lights, and shifting weather maps, movement itself becomes the only form of orientation.
Shuang Li stages the exhibition as an ongoing attempt to catch a tornado. The image of the extreme storm functions for Li both as a concrete meteorological event and as a metaphor for contemporary media environments and their incessant circulation of information. Much like tornadoes forming over flat landscapes, today’s media infrastructures operate via conditions of leveling. Everything appears equally accessible and immediate until one is suddenly drawn into a maelstrom of attention, data, and obsession. The metaphor also speaks to the circulation of information—the past constantly being stirred up; the dust of the past never settles as time passes, as if trapped in a tornado loop for an eternity. Throughout the exhibition, Li translates this oscillation between horizontal plane and vertical suction, drift and compression, into spiraling forms and immersive spatial situations.
Shuang Li, The Middle of the Day That Starts It All, 2026, installation view, in: Shuang Li, Alliance, Kunsthalle Basel, 2026, photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
The Middle of the Day That Starts It All (2026) marks the beginning of the expedition. Across thirteen TV screens, images unfold in relentless loops. Landscapes appear as narrow fragments glimpsed from a moving vehicle, digitally amplified to the point where they begin to dissolve before they can fully stabilize. The work functions like a sequence of B-roll footage from a road movie—comprising atmospheric shots of landscapes, the sound of conversation fragments, and passing environments. The installation is embedded in an architecture of metal structures that resemble a section of a rural roadway. Lifted up from the ground itself and gradually losing stability, the material winds through the space as though it can no longer withstand the force and velocity of the movement.
Shuang Li, Fire at Will, 2026, installation view, in: Shuang Li, Alliance, Kunsthalle Basel, 2026, photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
It is in the pursuit of the storm that images become increasingly unstable. The billboard-like works Fire at Will, Stolen from My Eyes, and Interlude (all 2026) layer video stills, private archives, and meteorological maps into shifting lenticular prints. Images no longer possess a fixed beginning or end; they circulate in a state of continual displacement. Landscapes dissolve into gestures, flickering lights into handwritten notes, weather maps into bruises on a body. Interlude spreads across the floor, its individual parts like detached pixels. Sculptures modelled on meteorological wind barbs have settled upon them—everyday objects preserved in resin, like condensation droplets gathering on smooth surfaces before the storm.
Shuang Li, With a Trunk of Ammunition Too, 2024, installation view, in: Shuang Li, Alliance, Kunsthalle Basel, 2026, photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Li approaches digital technologies not as isolated tools or objects but as forces permeating everyday life. Online platforms, infrastructures, and data streams shape communication, mobility, intimacy, and social relationships. They determine how identities form in a state of endless circulation and dictate the rules under which it is still possible to forge connections. With a Trunk of Ammunition Too (2024) translates these conditions into an intimate register, and the dynamics of the exhibition briefly decelerate. Movement yields to a temporary suspension. Morse-code lights illuminate the space, translating a letter the artist wrote to her mother into coded intimacy. Li’s voice remains audible throughout the room, as though slowly drawing the dormant vortex back into circulation.
Shuang Li, Alliance (Heart Loop), 2026, installation view, in: Shuang Li, Alliance, Kunsthalle Basel, 2026, photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel
Entering the final space, the tornado's force rises as swirling structures soar, as if the wind itself had taken on the materiality of steel. Alliance (Heart Loop) (2026) offers immediate immersion in the storm’s power. Blending the aesthetics of a documentary, a DIY road-trip movie, and a livestream, the video work brings the search for a tornado to life. The film follows multiple figures on their individual storm-chasing journey. Roads, gas stations, industrial buildings, and open fields appear simultaneously familiar and alien. The gradual collapse of the distinction between physical and digital environments blurs the boundary between the two. The sex doll protagonists are driven by a shared desire to enter the tornado itself, hoping to emerge transformed on the other side. Once human, but having lost agency in the storms of digital and algorithmic forces—their desire to reclaim what was taken away by the wind in the first place makes this their final attempt to reclaim agency.
It is in the film that the tornado becomes legible as a symptom of a flattened media landscape in which everything is continuously available all at once. Decisions become unstable as data streams, and swirling information flows continuously organize perception. What appears to be an individual choice is already shaped within these circulating systems. The tornado stands for surrender to the storm, to its pull, and to everything it sweeps away, for the desire to lose oneself within it and perhaps, precisely through this loss, to continue to exist.
The exhibition brings together a series of co-commissions and partnerships with JD Museum, Shenzhen, CN; Yenn and Alan Lo Foundation, Singapore, SG; Busan Biennale, Busan, KR and CHERUBY, Shanghai, CN.
About Kunsthalle Basel
Radical, curious, and always ahead of the curve. Kunsthalle Basel is one of the leading institutions for contemporary art in Europe and beyond. It pushes boundaries, gives space to new, bold voices, and always places the artists at the center.
Since 1839, the Basler Kunstverein hasn’t just shown art; it has continually redefined it. With an unwavering commitment to emerging artists, the Basler Kunstverein initiated the construction of Kunsthalle Basel, which opened its doors to the public in 1872. To this day, Kunsthalle Basel continues to bring groundbreaking artistic positions to the forefront, long before they make it big elsewhere.