As Art Basel Paris begins to take shape, the city prepares for floods of visitors during its celebration of art and culture. With the fair fast becoming a fixture in the international calendar, this third edition returns to the Grand Palais, gathering leading international galleries, collectors, and institutions under its glassy canopy.

The fair, which brings together 206 galleries from 41 countries and territories, is structured across three core sectors. Galeries dominates with around 177 leading galleries presenting modern, post-war, and contemporary works. Premise, which presents ten curated projects with thematic or historical focus, and Emergence, positioned high on the balconies of the Nave, offers 16 solo presentations by rising artists.

Conceived as a platform for discovery, Emergence spotlights a generation of artists shaping the language of contemporary art today. Curated with an eye toward experimentation and critical dialogue, the sector brings together 16 solo presentations across mediums such as painting, installation, sculpture, and new media. The section embraces the principle that the future of art often begins at the margins – placing the artists quite literally on the rise as they tower above the fair from the balconies.

With 29 first-time participants, Emergence reinforces the fair’s commitment to fostering new voices and sustaining Paris’s reputation as a city platforming the most exciting talent in the contemporary art scene. Highlights include Ash Love’s balloons and greeting-card paintings celebrating and questioning queer histories, Arash Nassiri’s miniature Sylvanian Family-inspired cityscapes glowing with Farsi letters, and Jala Wahid’s sculptures exploring migration, love, and resilience. Below, we’ve rounded up seven emerging artists to keep on your radar.

ASH LOVE

In the heart of République, at Exo Exo, a Paris-based artist collective and exhibition space, Ash Love presents Bébé Boum. Here, Love examines which narratives are celebrated and which are erased, highlighting the marginalisation of queer histories. The installation features colourful balloons printed with images from personal archives floating alongside paintings resembling greeting cards, each repeating the phrase “Happy Birthday”. Drawing on teenage aesthetics and digital communication, their broader practice spans painting, installation, writing, and performance, using familiar motifs to question identity and offer counter-narratives on the experiences of queer lives.

ARASH NASSIRI

In Ginny on Frederick’s exhibition space, Arash Nassiri presents Untitled, a sculptural installation that turns Tehranian shop signs into miniature cityscapes using Sylvanian Families toy buildings. Flickering Farsi letters and numbers light up the tiny shopfronts, suggesting the lives and streets lost to urban change and migration. The small buildings, usually associated with innocent childhood play, are transformed here into eerie reflections of a broken city. It’s a theme explored in Nassiri’s practice, which spans sculpture and installation using scale and light to explore the tension between preserving culture and losing it.

KANDIS WILLIAMS

At Heidi gallery, Kandis Williams presents a new project inspired by her research in South Korea, where she explored the lingering presence of Black American soldiers and the long-term effects of US militarisation. The work unfolds through a video travelogue essay alongside intricate collages and layered drawings, tracing how past wars continue to haunt the landscape and collective memory. By highlighting the lingering impact of colonial empires and the complex legacies of Black military identity, Williams transforms historical narratives into visually immersive art.

JALA WAHID

Jala Wahid presents Stealth Technology at Sophie Tappeiner Gallery. The work is a constellation of four sculptural pieces exploring the intersection of military invasion and forced migration, and the ways love endures in upheaval. These themes are central to her wider practice across sculpture, film, sound, and installation, through which she explores colonialism and the memory of the Kurdish diaspora in tactile, poetic forms.

Highlights include two mauve blindfolded horses lying on a nicotine-yellow foam mattress, their rough, fragmented forms recalling her parents’ journey across the Iran-Iraq border and the makeshift beds of refugee camps. Other elements, from a skeletal arm to a small black kitten inscribed with “love u”, evoke the persistence of resilience and tenderness in the face of conflict.

TANOA SASRAKU

At Vardaxoglou Gallery, Tanoa Sasraku presents Mascot, a monumental sculpture just under five metres in height. Made from newsprint, ink, and foraged mineral pigments from Ghana and Cornwall, the work reflects on the death of the artist’s father and the personal and historical connections that shape her practice. Sewn, soaked, and ripped layers of pigmented newsprint form the silhouette of a double-breasted suit torso, reimagining her father’s body while engaging with ideas of labour, ambition, and paternal presence. The piece is part of Sasraku’s wider Terratypes series, in which she transforms discarded materials into towering sculptural forms.

XIYADIE(⻄亚蝶) 

At Blindspot Gallery, Xiyadie (⻄亚蝶) presents a new series of papercuts exploring queer love and memory through traditional Chinese folk craft. Self-taught, Xiyadie merges folk motifs with contemporary storytelling as he brings together queer narratives with the rural landscapes of his childhood. For this exhibition, the artist depicts male lovers in bucolic settings surrounded by blooming peonies, birds, and butterflies.

DUYI HAN

Showing at BANK, Duyi Han’s Ordinance of the Subconscious Treatment is an exploration of mental health and contemporary Chinese culture. Working across collectable design, scenography, and digital art, Han develops what he calls “neuroaesthetic prescriptions,” combining historical and cultural motifs.

In the space, each room embodies a different mental state, with silk-embroidered objects scattered throughout. Chemical symbols such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin appear alongside phrases and cultural cues to invite reflection on contemporary ideas of happiness.

Art Basel Paris runs from October 24 – 26, 2025. Visit the website here for information about this and upcoming fairs.