Mennour is pleased to participate in the Art Basel Paris Public Program 2026 with two monumental sculptures by Alicja Kwade and Yinka Shonibare

ALICJA KWADE 
Born in 1979 in Katowice
Lives and works in Berlin

Working mostly with stone, mirrors, and steel, Alicja Kwade creates sculptures that question the systems humans have developed to explain and organize the world. In L’Élévation des Mondes, ten spheres of polished stone have been stacked into a massive, precarious-looking tower. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to planets, the stone spheres are sourced from different parts of the Earth, each one with a distinct colour and billions of years of geological history of transformation and time. The stack recalls the Tower of Babel and its warning: some manmade systems are often just a moment away from collapse.

YINKA SHONIBARE 
Born in 1962 in London
Lives and works in London

Yinka Shonibare works across sculpture, textiles, and painting to explore cultural ownership, globalization, and belonging. In this sculpture, a bronze form twists and folds as if caught in the wind, its heavy metal made to look weightless, like billowing fabric frozen mid-motion. The surface is hand-painted with Dutch wax patterns – a motif with roots in Indonesia, which was later mass-produced by Dutch companies and sold to buyers in West Africa, where it became a defining part of local style. Through the pattern, Shonibare points to the complex trading history between Africa and Europe.