Oliver Basciano

Oliver Basciano is a writer and editor at large at ArtReview

From Pandas to Street Art: a History of Diplomatic Gifts

Oliver BascianoArtReview23 March 2022

Paul Brummell’s ‘Diplomatic Gifts: A History in Fifty Presents’ offers a lesson in the pitfalls of power play

Gala Porras-Kim: Why Museums Need Spiritual Caretakers

Oliver BascianoArtReview02 March 2022

“So much of the institutional language about caring concerns the physical maintenance of objects. But when there’s some other intangible function, there is no space for this to be considered.”

Soft Power Station: Can Moscow’s GES-2 Navigate a New Cold War?

Oliver BascianoArtReview10 February 2022

Oliver Basciano reports from the opening of the V-A-C Foundation’s huge new art centre in the Russian capital

Eyal Weizman: Why Aesthetics Must Mean More than Beauty

Oliver BascianoArtReview04 February 2022

The founder of Forensic Architecture on the power of hyperaestheticisation, digital violence and how to read the world around us

An Ancient Vision for a New Art: Jaider Esbell (1979-2021)

Oliver BascianoArtReview04 November 2021

“I started to walk a lot in the world, I met many shamans – pajés, xamãs – from different peoples. And they begin to guide me, to expand my awareness to larger cosmogonic issues”

The Provocations of Vojtěch Kovařík

Oliver BascianoArtReview13 September 2021

Kitsch exoticism, colonial depictions and Greek mythology – the Czech painter are rife with cultural appropriation

What Can Art Do in the Dark Times? 34th Bienal de São Paulo – Review

Oliver Bascianoartreview.com03 September 2021

‘Though It’s Dark, Still I Sing’, curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, captures the sombre mood of Brazil in 2021, a country ravaged by the pandemic, environmental destruction and the excesses of its far-right administration