The 44th edition of the fair, which opened with a media preview at Basel in Switzerland on June 11 has a number of artists from India being represented by multiple galleries.
Four Indian galleries have been selected as exhibitors at the event, which features over 300 of the world's leading galleries for modern and contemporary art.
Photographer Dayanita Singh, artist L N Tallur and Mona Rai are being shown by the Berlin and New Delhi-based Nature Morte Gallery run by its directors Peter Nagy and Aparajita Jain.
"Third Sex Portfolio," by Dayanita Singh comprise eight silver gelatin prints of photographs of eunuchs a project that she began in 1989 when the photographer first encountered Mona Ahmed who eventually became the subject of her book "Myself Mona Ahmed."
Dayanita's is also currently one of four artists who is exhibiting in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
L N Tallur is showcasing four large scale works. Three of them are through the Nature Morte Gallery. They include - "Pedestal on Pedestal," a cast bronze pedestal placed on a museum cube pedestal; "Chromatophobia," a granite sculpture with a wooden leg, coins, hammers, and wall text; and "Apocalypse," an electro-magnetic coin polishing machine.
Bangalore-based Tallur had previously shown at the Kochi Muziris Bienalle and won the 2012 Skoda Art Prize.
Tallur is also represented by Mumbai gallery Chemould Prescott Road.
His most recent work "Veni Vidi Veci," an installation made out of Basel Mission Mangalore terracotta roof tiles, iron truss, and eight framed photographs is being shown at the "Arts Unlimited" section of the Basel fair.
The section curated by director of the Swiss Institute in New York, Gianni Jetzer, will be showing emerging talent along with established biggies such as Chinese artists Ai Weiwei. Mona Rai's mixed-media artworks, titled "Chandra and Prabha," "Kaal" and new works — "Mitti—Earth," "Rakh—Ashes," and "Sona—Gold" are also being exhibited.
Riyas Komu, co-founder of the Kochi Biennale Foundation, which conducted India's first art biennale last year is the only Indian to be in the Salon program of the Art Basel.
Komu, himself an artist, would be participating in a panel discussion "The future of biennials in local and global context." included in the Salon programme of the art event.
The Salon serves as an open platform for short presentations – often informal – such as artist talks, panels, lectures and performances.
Gallery Chelmould is also reprenting Jitish Kallat, Rashid Rana, Shakuntala Kulkarni, Hema Upadhyay, Shezad Dawood and Shilpa Gupta.
Artist Jitish Kallat has created "Aspect Ratio" a 7 part lenticular panoramic photo piece wherein the seven colours of the rainbow and the image of a Mumbai street flickers, and flips and alternate between being a flat-colour and having an image of the street emerge from it, as one walks past the work or even if one moves in front of it.
Kallat had adopted the panoramic vision in his 35 feet photo piece "Artist making local call" in 2007 where multiple time frames were captured in a single shot.
Shilpa Gupta places stars in mild steel of all flags from recognised and several unrecognised countries in a glass vitrine with an etched brass plate.
London-based Shezad Dawood has created a series of sculptures in neon, entangled in tumbleweed and placed on aluminium plinths.
Pakistani artist Rashid Rana's Notions of "Narrations II" is a continuation of Rana's recent "Transliteration Series". In this series of works, Rana selects a random image from one time and place in history, cuts it into pieces and reassembles it together, forming another image from another time and place.
Hema Upadhyay has created the "With Princesses rusted Belt".
Shakuntala Kulkarni's project attempts to address the vanishing histories and culture in today's Mumbai. Her photographs show a protagonist wearing an armour and posing in different locations in Mumbai.
Experimenter gallery from Kolkata presents, Graveyard of defiance – architecture of cities in crisis at the Art Basel.
Its three artists Bani Abidi from Pakistan, Naeem Mohaiemen, who works out of Dhaka and New York and Hajra Waheed, who lives and works in Canada respond to the idea of a city in crisis and under siege through imaginary or factual narratives.
"While Abidi creates a tabletop installation of mutilated handmade war figurines, Mohaiemen makes a new body of work with found photographs, taken in 1953 of their ancestral home in Dhaka and Waheed creates a series of ink transfer drawings on paper of the continuous demolishment of historic sites in Mecca and Medina for fear of idolatry," says a gallery representative.
The Art Basel is scheduled to be held till June 16.