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“Most basements aren’t for people. They are for washing machines, cars, wine, or boilers. If kitchens are for cooking, dining rooms are for dining, and bedrooms are for beds, basements tend to be left undefined—they are simply underground. They are out of sight and open to interpretation. When people go there, they are free to do anything”. (Anthony Huberman)

With a wide range of media, site-specific works, installations, 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. and 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 – a liminal and self-sustaining exhibition space, founded by CURA. in 2012 –, and is intended as a moving organism, a performing space called to change over time, until it becomes a single body and a choral and collective experience. The first draft of a “so-called biennial” thus presents itself with its own limitations and questions with respect to an ever-changing world, in which to nurture a new critical thought, and activate energies, connections, experimentations, languages, and a new sense of community.

“BAAB Issue 00 is a political act that outlines, highlights, and reveals. In its extensive and layered orchestration, what is brought to light is above all an embryonic, hybrid, metamorphic world, in which roles, times, and actions mix; it is the zero point in which differences and plurality coexist, in which the classical principles of artistic representation are undermined the open boundaries of a new space of freedom and of living together are defined. It’s the site for new assemblies. It is a way to imagine alternative futures”. (Ilaria Marotta, Andrea Baccin)

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, 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.