Basement Art Assembly Biennial
BAAB_Issue 00

Opening
September 10, 2025
Through November 6, 2025

Curated by
Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin

with
Davide Balula, James Bantone, Cecilia Bengolea, Hannah Black, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Vittorio Brodmann, Claudia Comte, Jeremy Deller, Gina Fischli, Gina Folly, Calla Henkel / Max Pitegoff, Carsten Höller, Karl Holmqvist, David Horvitz, Than Hussein Clark, Mark Leckey, Lily McMenamy, Nyala Moon, Valentin Noujaïm, Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), Michele Rizzo, Selma Selman, Tobias Spichtig, Nora Turato, Women’s History Museum
and more…

Being Basement-Based is a state of mind
(Anthony Huberman)

With a wide range of media, site-specific works, installations, sound performances, films, actions and new productions, the debut edition of Basement Art Assembly Biennial_BAAB_Issue 00 opens in Rome on September 10, 2025.

Conceived and curated by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin, founding directors of CURA., in dialogue with an Advisory Board composed of Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Max Colard, Simon Denny, Anthony Huberman and Lumi Tan, BAAB_Issue 00 is set within the limited confines of Basement Roma and is intended as a political act that outlines, highlights, and reveals. The assembly, as a contemporary agora, means debate, exchange, common sense. It is a site of meaning read in the controversial relationship between theater and manifesto, or the act of making visible, highlighting, manifesting. It is the moment in which the passage from being in an individual form to being in a collective form occurs.

It’s the space for underground assemblies and new tribes
(Ilaria Marotta, Andrea Baccin)

Like every shared moment, the ritual is marked by the repetition of the event, hence a biennial, which allows the necessary time to consolidate, regenerate, retake shape, through a normal cycle of refoundation of the group: new art tribes—as Achille Bonito Oliva would call them—that in addition to intellectual affinities are nourished by sociality, by being together and by a collective regeneration.

BAAB has no fixed location, nor any exhibition model,because art no longer has one.Let us therefore celebrate its inaugural statement: ‘Underground is the new institution.
(Nicolas Bourriaud)

The list of participating artists includes: Davide Balula (1978), James Bantone (1992), Cecilia Bengolea (1979), Hannah Black (1981), Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (1995), Vittorio Brodmann (1987), Claudia Comte (1983), Jeremy Deller (1966), Gina Fischli (1989), Gina Folly (1983), Calla Henkel (1988) / Max Pitegoff (1987), Carsten Höller (1961), Karl Holmqvist (1964), David Horvitz (1988), Than Hussein Clark (1981), Mark Leckey (1964), Lily McMenamy (1994), Nyala Moon (1992), Valentin Noujaïm (1991), Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo) (1989), Michele Rizzo (1984), Selma Selman (1991), Tobias Spichtig (1982), Nora Turato (1991), Women’s History Museum (Mattie Barringer, 1990 / Amanda McGowan, 1990).

An extensive interdisciplinary program of readings, talks, film premieres, workshops, screenings and performances, designed to engage both the local and international art scenes also includes: Alessandro Cicoria, Crack Reading Club, DIS, Invernomuto, Lily McMenamy, Cecilia Bengolea, Michele Rizzo, Selma Selman.

Each week, the exhibition will be also enriched with a growing number of rotating works (featuring Elisabetta Benassi, Anna Franceschini, Diego Gualandris, Nicola Pecoraro, Gianni Politi, Lorenzo Silvestri) introduced by Q&A by editor Eleonora Milani. A podcast curated by Martha Kirszenbaum and Giulia Colletti will accompany 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 will be held on September 10, feat. DJ sets by UF1980, Gigiotto Von Alt, and RPM (rsvp@curamagazine.com for the guest list and location.)