Art historian, curator and writer Alayo Akinkugbe is behind the popular Instagram page A Black History of Art, which highlights overlooked Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers, past and present. In a column for AnOthermag.com titled Black Gazes, Akinkugbe examines a spectrum of Black perspectives from across artistic disciplines and throughout art history, asking: how do Black artists see and respond to the world around them?
Steve McQueen is the Oscar-winning British filmmaker and artist known best for films such as Shame (2011) and 12 Years a Slave (2013). His art practice is equally acclaimed – he won the Turner Prize in 1999 for his video work Deadpan, an early recognition of a career that continues to challenge both form and content in contemporary art. McQueen’s latest exhibition, Bass at Schaulager in Basel, feels like a new chapter in his oeuvre, though the ideas at its root trace back around 25 years.
The installation was first shown at Dia Beacon, New York, but its formlessness – the piece is composed only of light and sound – allows it to be adapted to any given space. Upon walking into the Schaulager, the audience and surrounding space are coated in a single, slowly shifting hue. The space is lit by over 1,300 light bulbs, installed across five floors, which cycle through the colour spectrum over the course of 30 minutes. The soft murmurs of bass music, a series of tracks from an improvisation session featuring renowned bassist Marcus Miller and four other musicians – Meshell Ndegeocello, Aston Barrett Jr, Mamadou Kouyaté and Laura-Simone Martin – emit from large-scale speakers.
The enormous, cathedral-like space of the Schaulager is empty, except for the speakers and lights. It’s an immersive, bodily experience that draws us into the present moment. Bass is the result of McQueen’s long-standing interests in the emotional and psychological resonance of colour – as explored in earlier works like Charlotte (2004) – and his ongoing engagement with music of the Black diaspora, most notably in Soundtrack of America, a 2019 performance project made in collaboration with Quincy Jones at The Shed in New York.
The power of Bass lies in its provision of the rare opportunity to “be in yourself, with yourself”, in McQueen’s words. Below, the artist talks about the making of his ambitious new exhibition.
Alayo Akinkugbe: I felt an overwhelming sense of calm within your installation, Bass. It anchored me in the present moment and made me turn inwards. Was that something you wanted to explore through this work?
Steve McQueen: Yes, the here and now. It’s not about yesterday or the future. To be in yourself, with yourself – there aren’t often spaces or environments that give you that. The sound is familiar but unrecognisable; there’s a sense that it reverts back to you.
Often, when you’re in a space engaging with art, the focus is on the thing, on whatever you’re looking at. Here, it’s about you. There are other people walking around, in your periphery, but [you get] the feeling of being alone with others.
AA: You referenced a quote, “The bass guitar changed music,” from Quincy Jones, whom you’ve collaborated with previously. The bass music in the installation was created through an improvisation session with a group of musicians, but the initial idea for this music dates back much further than when you received this commission.
SM: The beginning of the piece started about 20 years ago, when I was talking to [American jazz trumpeter and saxophonist] Ornette Coleman. Before that, I’d had the whole idea of engaging with colour. The two ideas weren’t necessarily connected; they were just based on the different things I was looking at. I know that was the seed.
I also remember about 25 years ago, listening to A Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and other musicians, and thinking, “What would happen if you separated the sound and had each individual instrument on a different speaker?” Obviously we couldn’t do that then, but now we can with AI. Later, I was talking to [the late Nigerian curator] Okwui Enwezor – a friend of mine forever – towards the end of his life, and we were discussing abstraction in my work. That brought back the idea of musicians.
“To be in yourself, with yourself – there aren’t often spaces or environments that give you that” – Steve McQueen
AA: You brought together musicians from across the African diaspora to record the sound for Bass. Were you hoping to explore the connections between the music of Black artists across the globe and how their distinct styles might synthesise?
SM: Absolutely, it’s about the African diaspora. The musicians had never met properly before, and after 15 minutes of conversation, they started to make music. What you’re hearing [in the exhibition] has never been rehearsed; it’s all improvised. And that’s what we do. Black people, in a sense, we’re brand new. We’ve had to invent ourselves from nothing because a lot of things were taken away: religion, tradition, language, and so forth. So we’re brand new.
AA: Did you face any challenges adapting the installation to the space at Schaulager after Dia Beacon?
SM: Yes, a lot, because we have 1,300 bulbs here. We had to get them manufactured in China. We decided to do this two years ago, but you never know what’s going to happen. It’s all very precarious; it’s just an idea and then you have to make it. It was a challenge, but I think what Schaulager has done is extraordinary. [The installation went from] hell to heaven, [Dia Beacon was subterranean] and this is cathedral-like. Black music is a celebration; the starting point is not a joyous one, but where it ends up is joyous.
AA: The installation also makes you aware of your size and can be disorienting. Was scale something you were thinking about here?
SM: Yes, because the sound travels in the height. But also, it actually flattens the perspective when you look up. It’s a bit Matrix-like. The architecture does certain things: you can travel through these different levels, have a respite at the stairs, and come back in again to a different perspective. We’re all looking for something … maybe we could find ourselves.
AA: When you’re in the exhibition, it feels like being in limbo.
SM: Absolutely, because when you arrive here for the first time, you don’t know where you are and you have to orientate yourself to a completely different environment that you’ve never experienced before. There is a bit of limbo, and then at some point, you find the centre somehow. I think it is the recognisable unfamiliar. People are willing to engage with this – they don’t just walk out, which I’m very grateful for.
Bass by Steve McQueen is on show at Schaulager Basel until 16 November 2025.
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Art historian, curator and writer Alayo Akinkugbe is behind the popular Instagram page A Black History of Art, which highlights overlooked Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers, past and present. In a column for AnOthermag.com titled Black Gazes, Akinkugbe examines a spectrum of Black perspectives from across artistic disciplines and throughout art history, asking: how do Black artists see and respond to the world around them?
Steve McQueen is the Oscar-winning British filmmaker and artist known best for films such as Shame (2011) and 12 Years a Slave (2013). His art practice is equally acclaimed – he won the Turner Prize in 1999 for his video work Deadpan, an early recognition of a career that continues to challenge both form and content in contemporary art. McQueen’s latest exhibition, Bass at Schaulager in Basel, feels like a new chapter in his oeuvre, though the ideas at its root trace back around 25 years.
The installation was first shown at Dia Beacon, New York, but its formlessness – the piece is composed only of light and sound – allows it to be adapted to any given space. Upon walking into the Schaulager, the audience and surrounding space are coated in a single, slowly shifting hue. The space is lit by over 1,300 light bulbs, installed across five floors, which cycle through the colour spectrum over the course of 30 minutes. The soft murmurs of bass music, a series of tracks from an improvisation session featuring renowned bassist Marcus Miller and four other musicians – Meshell Ndegeocello, Aston Barrett Jr, Mamadou Kouyaté and Laura-Simone Martin – emit from large-scale speakers.
The enormous, cathedral-like space of the Schaulager is empty, except for the speakers and lights. It’s an immersive, bodily experience that draws us into the present moment. Bass is the result of McQueen’s long-standing interests in the emotional and psychological resonance of colour – as explored in earlier works like Charlotte (2004) – and his ongoing engagement with music of the Black diaspora, most notably in Soundtrack of America, a 2019 performance project made in collaboration with Quincy Jones at The Shed in New York.
The power of Bass lies in its provision of the rare opportunity to “be in yourself, with yourself”, in McQueen’s words. Below, the artist talks about the making of his ambitious new exhibition.
Alayo Akinkugbe: I felt an overwhelming sense of calm within your installation, Bass. It anchored me in the present moment and made me turn inwards. Was that something you wanted to explore through this work?
Steve McQueen: Yes, the here and now. It’s not about yesterday or the future. To be in yourself, with yourself – there aren’t often spaces or environments that give you that. The sound is familiar but unrecognisable; there’s a sense that it reverts back to you.
Often, when you’re in a space engaging with art, the focus is on the thing, on whatever you’re looking at. Here, it’s about you. There are other people walking around, in your periphery, but [you get] the feeling of being alone with others.
AA: You referenced a quote, “The bass guitar changed music,” from Quincy Jones, whom you’ve collaborated with previously. The bass music in the installation was created through an improvisation session with a group of musicians, but the initial idea for this music dates back much further than when you received this commission.
SM: The beginning of the piece started about 20 years ago, when I was talking to [American jazz trumpeter and saxophonist] Ornette Coleman. Before that, I’d had the whole idea of engaging with colour. The two ideas weren’t necessarily connected; they were just based on the different things I was looking at. I know that was the seed.
I also remember about 25 years ago, listening to A Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and other musicians, and thinking, “What would happen if you separated the sound and had each individual instrument on a different speaker?” Obviously we couldn’t do that then, but now we can with AI. Later, I was talking to [the late Nigerian curator] Okwui Enwezor – a friend of mine forever – towards the end of his life, and we were discussing abstraction in my work. That brought back the idea of musicians.
“To be in yourself, with yourself – there aren’t often spaces or environments that give you that” – Steve McQueen
AA: You brought together musicians from across the African diaspora to record the sound for Bass. Were you hoping to explore the connections between the music of Black artists across the globe and how their distinct styles might synthesise?
SM: Absolutely, it’s about the African diaspora. The musicians had never met properly before, and after 15 minutes of conversation, they started to make music. What you’re hearing [in the exhibition] has never been rehearsed; it’s all improvised. And that’s what we do. Black people, in a sense, we’re brand new. We’ve had to invent ourselves from nothing because a lot of things were taken away: religion, tradition, language, and so forth. So we’re brand new.
AA: Did you face any challenges adapting the installation to the space at Schaulager after Dia Beacon?
SM: Yes, a lot, because we have 1,300 bulbs here. We had to get them manufactured in China. We decided to do this two years ago, but you never know what’s going to happen. It’s all very precarious; it’s just an idea and then you have to make it. It was a challenge, but I think what Schaulager has done is extraordinary. [The installation went from] hell to heaven, [Dia Beacon was subterranean] and this is cathedral-like. Black music is a celebration; the starting point is not a joyous one, but where it ends up is joyous.
AA: The installation also makes you aware of your size and can be disorienting. Was scale something you were thinking about here?
SM: Yes, because the sound travels in the height. But also, it actually flattens the perspective when you look up. It’s a bit Matrix-like. The architecture does certain things: you can travel through these different levels, have a respite at the stairs, and come back in again to a different perspective. We’re all looking for something … maybe we could find ourselves.
AA: When you’re in the exhibition, it feels like being in limbo.
SM: Absolutely, because when you arrive here for the first time, you don’t know where you are and you have to orientate yourself to a completely different environment that you’ve never experienced before. There is a bit of limbo, and then at some point, you find the centre somehow. I think it is the recognisable unfamiliar. People are willing to engage with this – they don’t just walk out, which I’m very grateful for.
Bass by Steve McQueen is on show at Schaulager Basel until 16 November 2025.
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