Curated by Elena Filipovic (Basel)

Curated by Kathleen Rahn (Hannover)

Kaari Upson’s disquieting new video for her Kunsthalle Basel exhibition transports viewers to the dusty lot of her childhood home in San Bernardino, California. The sound of a giant pine being sawed to bits overwhelms the nighttime scene. Upson appears in the frame, spotlit, wringing her hands, attempting to speak over the noise of the machinery. Despair and confusion characterize the best of Upson’s oeuvre, which will be surveyed in a nearly concurrent show at Kunstverein Hannover. This dual presentation is fitting for an artist who has made entire bodies of work about doppelgängers. (See the model homes in her 2017 video In Search of the Perfect Double, or the many life-size dolls resembling Upson’s mother in Idiot’s Guide Womb Room, 2016–17.) In Basel, the galleries will be populated by eerie resin casts of the domestic architecture of her youth—skins of skins. One’s roots are always tangled; Upson will unearth hers in a children’s book produced for the occasion.

— Mira Dayal