LISTE Art Fair Basel 2026 - Booth 64: Alfredo Aceto & Shi Yi

For LISTE 2026, Hua International presents a two-person booth featuring the Italian-born and Swiss-based artist Alfredo Aceto in dialogue with the Chinese artist Shi Yi. Approaching Craig Owens’ notion of allegory, the two artists investigate questions of masculinity and hegemonic culture. In line with Hua International’s dedication to working with emerging and underrepresented artists, the presentation centers peripheral and marginalized experience.

A selection from the series Tongue Twister is shown on the right-hand side of the booth. In it, tongues, and other objects of the (non-)intact masculine body, appear in an attempt to explore the construction of stereotypical identities. On its left, the artwork Bocca con Matita confronts the body by placing a pencil in partly opened lips and replacing one form of expression, speech, with another, the touch of an object used to write. Modifications of the body are central to Aceto’s work. Diagnosed with amusia, a condition that affects the brain’s capacity to process melodies, he frequently employs the bell—an object that interrupts— as an allegory for his own body: a body that cannot process melodies “correctly” yet remains embedded within them; a body that confronts social reality while simultaneously being constrained by it.

This confrontation continues in Trap, suspended from the ceiling in the center of the booth. Recalling the Aceto’s youth and the austere, often violent architecture of his Italian school, the work carries coming-of-age undertones. The corporal butterfly trap allows us to deconstruct what it means to possess a functioning body, and what it means to perform masculinity.

Shi Yi will be presented to a European audience for the first time. It will also be his first participation in an international art fair, in line with Hua International’s foundational commitment to foregrounding marginal experiences. Exhibited opposite Alfredo Aceto’s works, Shi Yi’s paintings draw inspiration from both the traditional painting traditions of his hometown, Chaozhou, and Western, particularly Italian, art historical motifs.

Working through allegory, Shi Yi explores the space between these two visual traditions, combining Western figures and perspectives with Chinese landscapes, symbols, and cultural references. His paintings investigate questions of identity, masculinity, social behavior, and cultural memory,making visible what is often overlooked or taken for granted.Through subtle gestures, expressions, and narrative constructions, he reveals the socio-cultural structures that shape everyday experience while simultaneously creating new allegorical frameworks through which contemporary realities can be understood.

This dialogue between traditional Chinese pictorial approaches and Western painting techniques is further echoed in the suspended wooden framing incorporated into the presentation of the artist’s paintings.