Basement Basement Art Assembly Biennial is a non-profit organization founded by CURA. and conceived to make a glitch between the institutional dynamics of the art system and an underground and experimental world, which alludes to the freedom to define new worlds. Conceived and curated by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin, founding directors of CURA., Basement Art Assembly Biennial opened its debut edition Issue 00 on September 10, 2025.

Presented in dialogue with an Advisory Board composed of Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Max Colard, Simon Denny, Anthony Huberman and Lumi Tan, BAAB_Issue 00 is conceived as the teaser of an ongoing project, which presents itself with its own limits and questions with respect to an ever-changing world. Set within the limited confines of Basement Roma and some occasional offsite hotspots, BAAB_Issue 00 is intended as a moving organism, a performing space called to change over time, in a process of transformation, writing and rewriting that develops over its duration, until it becomes a single body and a choral and collective experience. The threshold of a claustrophobic and congested exhibition space becomes the place where to nurture a new critical thought, through energies, connections, experimentations and a new sense of community.

In an era in which everything tends towards overexposure, Basement Art Assembly Biennial invites us to change perspective and look downwards because “underground is the new institution.”

An extensive interdisciplinary program of readings, talks, film premieres, workshops, screenings, and performances, designed to engage both the local and international art scenes. Each week, the exhibition is also enriched with a growing number of rotating works introduced by Q&A by guest curators. A podcast curated by Martha Kirszenbaum and Giulia Colletti is collecting the voices of the artists along the duration of the show. The performing program is co-curated by Ilaria Mancia.

In addition, Ruggero Pietromarchi presents Sonorama, a sonic device that catalyzes dialogue and connection. Accompanied by a series of mixtapes commissioned from CCL, Dr. Pit, Car Culture, it offers a collective and layered sonic experience.

A social dinner called to involve the community of participating artists, around a cooking session, will conclude the exhibition.

The exhibition – with Soho House Rome as main partner and the media partnership of e-flux and Zero – is accompanied by a newspaper published by CURA. which includes texts by the curators, Nicolas Bourriaud, Anthony Huberman, Lumi Tan, Jean-Max Colard, with work descriptions edited by Costanza Paissan. A second chapter of the newspaper will be published at the end of the Public Program and will collect documentation of all the interventions.

The official party for the Biennial held on September 10, feat. DJ sets by UF1980, Gigiotto Von Alt, and RPM.

Founders
CURA. is a curatorial platform and a publishing house, founded in Rome in 2009 by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin.

Basement Roma is a contemporary art center and nonprofit organization founded by CURA. in 2012, which operates with a spirit of experimentation and artistic freedom, combining critical thinking and publishing. Envisioned as an independent, multidisciplinary, and experimental institution, Basement Roma embodies, within the underground soul of its exhibition space, a spirit of research and radical imagination. Drawing on the historical experiences that have characterized the city’s avant-garde since the late 1960s, Basement Roma redefines, through art and artists, the sense of community and public participation, and the centrality of abandoned, peripheric, and disqualified spaces.

Basement Art Assembly Biennial
BAAB_Issue 00
Opening September 10
September 11 – November 6, 2025

FOUNDERS AND ARTISTIC DIRECTORS
Ilaria Marotta, Andrea Baccin

ADVISORY BOARD
Nicolas Bourriaud
Jean-Max Colard
Simon Denny
Anthony Huberman
Lumi Tan

BAAB_Issue 00 is made possible thanks to the support of BAAB_Founding Members:

Massimo Adario and Dimitri Borri
Collezione Agovino, Naples
Giorgio Angella
Associazione Giovani Collezionisti
Lorenzo Bassetti
Bruno Bolfo
Chiara Casoli Ginelli and Christian Cesareo
Francesco Della Rovere
Francesca Guerizio
INCURVA
Ettorino La Rocca
Bebe Leone
Luca Liberali
Flavia Lo Chiatto
Virginia and Carlo Lolli Ghetti
Giovanna Marianacci
Marval Collection
Gianluca and Anna Perrella
Sof:Art
Gianandrea Strekeelj
Paolo Vanoni

and others who wish to remain anonymous.