Sara Sadik. Xenon Palace: Crystal Zastruga

Basement Roma, the project led by CURA. since 2012, is thrilled to announce the opening on February 22, of its new exhibition space, with the first solo exhibition in Italy by French artist Sara Sadik, Xenon Palace: Crystal Zastruga, a multi-media installation resembling a futuristic hookah lounge. 

Xenon Palace is a place far from the real world, a smoky environment, inhabited by fantastic creatures, the Xenons, which appear from the fumes of hookahs. Here the artist explores the magical dimension of childhood that takes shape in adulthood, through an immersive surrounding that takes us into the suspended universe of Zetrei, the main character, played by Émile-Samory Fofana. 
Zetrei is a lonely man who has lost his family and friends, forced to live in a foreign world, and that only by spending his days at Xenon Palace finds his haven of peace, capable of soothing the loneliness and sadness of his own existence. 
 
Halfway between fiction and documentary, everyday experiences, biography, video games, science fiction and French rap, Sara Sadik’s work creates initiatory stories in which young characters move eagerly within an identity process of physical and mental transformation.

Focused on the themes of integration, identity and marginalization in a still deeply discriminating society, Sara Sadik’s practice features some of the central themes of social policies centered on institutionalized racism and its process of de-symbolization.
 
“When speaking of Sara Sadik’s work there is often talk of beurcore: in a sense, a reinvention of Afrofuturism based on the experiences and cultural references associated with the Maghrebin diasporas. The cultural and religious repression of the Islamophobic society not only aims to exclude, but also to foreclose any feeling of community conveyed by symbolism. This is the objective when the right wing evokes so virulently and obscenely a Judeo-Christian culture: while the dominant benefit from a symbolic set of references, the oppressed are condemned to being stereotypes.” (Félix Boggio Éwanjé-Épée and Stella Magliani-Belkacem in Sara Sadik, CURA. 38, The Generational Issue, Spring Summer 2022.)­

Born by a wide collaboration between public and private institutions, Sara Sadik’s exhibition will then move to the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, with a three-day performance (April 2023) before moving—with a second chapter of the show—to the Kunsthalle Lissabon at the end of June 2023.

With Sara Sadik’s exhibition and the opening of its new space, Basement Roma celebrates ten years of exhibition programming. Conceived as a physical extension of the editorial activity carried out by CURA., Basement Roma focuses on the research of the new generations of international artists, new media, digital culture and new languages, confirming its interest in the most current proposals of the contemporary art scene.

Sara Sadik was born in France in 1994. She lives and works in Marseille. Recent exhibitions include Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (DE); Biennale de Lyon (FR); Crèvecœur, Paris (FR); CAC Brétigny (FR); Manifesta 13, Marseille (FR). Her work is included in many institutional collections, including Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin – Fondation Lafayette Anticipations, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Centre National des Arts Plastiques. In 2023, Sara Sadik will be also part of L’Almanach 23, Le Consortium, Dijon (FR).
Basement Roma’s new graphic identity and website are designed by Dan Solbach (with Emma Kouassi) 

French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici
April 2023 

Kunsthalle Lissabon

June 28–September 2, 2023 

In partnership with
French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici  
Kunsthalle Lissabon 
Crèvecœur, Paris
Soho House Rome 

Thanks to the support of
Francesco Della Rovere
Land srl 
Marval Collection
Soft:Art

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