- Celia, or the Misfortunes of Virtue
Art Basel 2026
October 20th — 26th, 2026
Press:
Emergent Magazine
The New York Times
ARTnews
A part of the Public Program of Art Basel Paris, 2026.
With statues of Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain, and a name borrowed from a former French colony, the Jardin de la Nouvelle-France commemorates a complex legacy of French colonization. Along one of the park’s pathways, two tall, narrow bronze rods by Boz Deseo Garden counter colonial ideas of difference, determination, and identity.
The sculptures are modeled on a lightning rod that washed ashore from the Bristol Channel—once a major route in the transatlantic slave trade, and where what was left of a sunken slave ship was found in the 1990s—but it was never fully recovered. The work continues Garden’s research into how the legacy of slavery shapes systems of representation, memory, and public space.
- Celia, or the Misfortunes of Virtue
Each: 227 x 27 x 8.6 cm (rod), 100 x 100 cm (base)
89 3/8 x 10 5/8 x 3 3/8 in (rod), 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in (base)