Big Niki energy arriving at Unlimited 🍆 👀 Go behind the scenes of Art Basel as handlers carefully install Niki de Saint Phalle's monumental 'Blue Obelisk with Flowers', presented by in our Unlimited sector by @galerievallois. Deeply affected by the AIDS pandemic, during which she lost friends including Keith Haring and her assistant Ricardo Menon, Niki de Saint Phalle got involved early on in the fight for prevention. She wrote a book with the Swiss immunologist Dr. Silvio Barandun and created a new series, ‘Obelisks’. Imagined as monuments and taking up the iconography (and name) of the Egyptian obelisk and Indian lingam, these were intended by the artist to be cheerful, colorful, and covered with the classic motifs of her vocabulary – hearts, stripes, flowers – using the mosaic technique she developed for her Tarot Garden. With her characteristic joie de vivre and humor, de Saint Phalle succeeds with Blue Obelisk with Flowers – the largest and most exhibited piece from this body of work – in intertwining her private life, monumental architecture, and art history. Find it on view now through Sunday 21 in Hall 1 at Messeplatz. - @artbasel