Art Basel’s Latest Collaboration Aims to Put Art in Service of Saving the Oceans

Protecting our oceans has been a concern of environmentalists for decades, and as climate change has only rapidly increased, that concern has become more urgent. Enter the environmental organization Parley for the Oceans. Its founder Cyrill Gutsch told ARTnews that he doesn’t want to sound “preachy,” but at times over a long conversation, he appears to have little room for alternatives.

With wide-reaching partners from Dior, Adidas, and Stella McCartney to the UN and the World Bank, Parley for the Oceans has an ambitious remit to end the world’s dependence on plastic, and its latest collaboration, with the mega art fair company Art Basel, is just the latest in these no-small plans. 

Launched at Art Basel Miami Beach in December, the organization bills its new “Art for the Oceans” collaboration as a “global fundraising initiative to protect oceans, climate, and life against plastic pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss,” and it will play a role at Art Basel Hong Kong this week.

Parley, as it is often called for short, entering the art world might seem like it’s come out of the blue, but since its launch in 2012, the organization has worked with over 30 artists, including the likes of Julian Schnabel, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Katharina Grosse, and Doug Aitken. It would seem, then, that its joining forces with the world’s most important art fair would be the logical next step. What’s more, Gutsch, who closed his design firm to create Parley, said the idea for the organization began at Art Basel in Switzerland, when he learned about the work of environmental activist Captain Paul Watson. Their meeting directly spurred “the epiphany that led me to dedicate my whole life to the oceans,” Gutsch has said.

At the Hong Kong fair, Parley will sell its limited-edition, artist-designed tote bags, made from plastic recuperated from nature. A single bag funds the removal of 20 pounds of plastic waste. They will also offer one-hour guided tours of the fair, highlighting artworks that share a connection to the environment and artists who have previously collaborated with Parley. (Tours cost $388HKD, around $49 USD, with proceeds going to the environmental cause.)

In an email, Art Basel Hong Kong director Angelle Siyang-Li told ARTnews that this collaboration with Parley is a way for the fair to develop both immediate and long-terms plans on how to reduce its carbon footprint. “Sustainability is a pressing issue for art fairs and the entire art world,” she said. “Art Basel is strongly committed to reducing its environmental impact as well as using its platform to encourage wider change across the art world.”

In Miami, Parley also featured artist-designed surfboards, which they chose not to ship to Hong Kong to limit carbon emissions, though they can be sent to any interested takers. For that launch, Schnabel, who has been an early Parley collaborator, exhibited three of his works as part of their partnership with Art Basel, and said at the time he had participated as a way to support “Parley’s work to change the destiny of our planet. Protecting the oceans goes far beyond protecting marine wildlife. Protecting the oceans means protecting humanity.”

Meanwhile, beyond its recent journey into art fairs, Parley also commissions artworks, both limited prints and larger installations, as a way to help fund its advocacy programs, including environmental education, plastic cleanups, recycling, and research into plastic-alternative materials, like the recuperated marine plastic that its bags are made from. Future plans include large, site-specific installations at the Art Basel fairs and beyond, as well as other programs like creating an artist residency.

But more than raising funds, Gutsch said he sees these first few art fairs as “introductions” into the larger art world, to spur both awareness and future collaborations. Beyond these art-related ventures, Parley also generates income from its commercial collaborations with brands like Adidas and Dior, as well as via direct donations and grants. However, Gutsch declined to answer questions about how much was raised at its Miami fundraiser in December, or about Parley’s budget, a nonprofit with 200 “core” employees. “We need a lot, into the 10’s of millions of dollars,” Gutsch said.

Parley relies on thousands of collaborations with other groups to work toward an “end to the plastic crisis,” which involves plans for building recycling and sorting hubs in three countries where the group has concentrated efforts: the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and the Dominican Republic. Once that goal is achieved there, Parley hopes to duplicate their “end-to-end solution” to plastic, built on a strategy that entails: Avoiding plastics/emissions, Intercepting plastic waste and pollutants, and Redesigning materials, methods, and mindset, or AIR. “It works. We’re very efficient… we just need to grow it now,” Gutsch said. The group’s 2023 report counted some 1 million participants in their education programs and cleanups in 57 countries, over 574,000 volunteers in global programs, and over 8.1 million kilograms of debris removed from nature and coastal areas.

“Parley,” in pirate lore, is a French word for a “conference or discussion, especially between opposing sides.” That notion seems to resonate in today’s divisive times, especially when it comes to the immediacy of climate change. Gutsch sees it as a way to describe the group’s method and challenge ahead, to parley—or talk—to art world elites, who aren’t exactly reputed for leading environmentally friendly lifestyles.

“The ecological footprint of the top end of the art market remains incredibly high, because of the almost incessant air travel,” Olav Velthuis, a sociologist focusing on the art market at the University of Amsterdam, told ARTnews in an email. Art fairs, too, are relatively high-polluting events, because they are often held in temporary venues, require shipping artwork, and attract jet-setting collectors who fly private—the bread and butter of major fairs.

The 2023 Art Basel and UBS survey of global collecting noted that while 57 percent of high net-worth collectors surveyed were willing to pay premiums for more sustainable purchases, 77 percent said they planned to travel to more fairs or overseas events than the previous year. “Although most collectors were aware of and concerned over the sustainability of the market, this has not fully filtered down to their actions or resulted in any significant reduction in their plans to travel,” the report concludes.

This lack of reduction in private air travel has already sparked protests, including one staged by the UK-founded environmental group Extinction Rebellion on March 9 that involved blocking the roads to Maastricht’s airport during TEFAF. “This segment of the art market is simply not sustainable,” Velthuis said, recommending a radical shift to a more local model. “Members of the art world, including Art Basel, urgently need to discuss on a more fundamental level how the contemporary art world and art market are organized. So far, I don’t see much willingness to engage in that discussion.”

For Gutsch, that is where Parley comes in. Asked if he sees any contradictions in working with a high-polluting milieu, Gutsch had a ready response. Far from the organization being “pure” itself (“we are no saints” and “we are all natural-born hypocrites at this point,” he said), Parley has already collaborated with major corporations and countries with particularly high carbon emissions. Eventually, he says the “ultimate potential” of the Art Basel collaboration, is to “drastically improve” the fair’s footprint.

“Our approach is to be in the room to collaborate,” he said. “Because if I would shy away from polluters or from events that are polluting, I would also have to shy away from governments that are polluting. … I’m actually doing the total opposite.”

He continued, “I am an innovator. We, as an organization, are change-makers. We go to the battlegrounds, where the most damage is being done, and in that sense, you can call Art Basel a battleground.”

While art fairs might be a key battleground when it comes to climate activism, Gutsch said Art Basel has already shown “courage” by choosing to collaborate with Parley, and his goal with this collaboration is to address the full-scope of the polluting, high-net-worth lifestyle that convenes around week-long art events like these, by converting collectors, both to reduce their emissions in their personal lifestyles, as well as in their wider social and professional circles.

“Somebody who can afford to buy an Andy Warhol, or a Basquiat, or a [Julian] Schnabel, usually has a lot of influence, so they can call up their leadership team, and say: ‘Let’s get out of plastic, let’s get out of fossil fuel,’” Gutsch explained. “We want to increase that group of high-net worth individuals that are exposed to us, because I don’t blame and shame anyone. I want to change them. I love sinners!”

Like many art fairs, Art Basel has begun to take steps toward greater sustainability in recent years, and Siyang-Li, ABHK’s director, said the event is “strongly committed to reducing its environmental impact.” One example is its active membership in the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC), which requires certain commitments from participants, including developing a “Decarbonisation Action Plan,” a regularly updated, step-by-step carbon reduction strategy that includes setting a “near-zero waste target,” measuring emissions, and auditing waste, while guiding against “bad habits and social convention.”

Siyang-Li added, “We understand the immense value of collective effort. That’s why our collaboration with Parley for the Oceans and also with the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) are central to our strategy. Together, we aim to harness the collective expertise and commitment of the art world to drive meaningful change.”

The Decarbonisation Action Plan is part of the GCC-member goal of reaching a 50-percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030, which “is entirely possible” to do, a spokesperson for the group told ARTnews. The GCC has also witnessed positive change in the arts sector over the last four years, sighting over 1,150 new members, and “rapid progress in climate consciousness,” as well as a “readiness of many to begin to take action on the issues,” according to the spokesperson. The question remains whether that progress will be fast enough.

A key ingredient to these efforts are the artists, whom Glutch said have a special “convening power.” He asked, “How do you make something like protecting the oceans, and our future, relevant to people that are otherwise so busy? I think the artist has the unique role in society to burst open these bubbles where everybody tends to hide.” Art can empower its viewers to feel a “readiness, an openness, which is something that we need, to create empathy for our cause,” he said. “Empathy is really what this is all about.”