Basement Art Assembly Biennial

A biennial that looks downwards

In the Roman contemporary art scene, BAAB — Basement Art Assembly Biennial is the most radical experiment of recent years. It does not occupy historic palaces or monumental pavilions: it takes place in the basements of Basement Roma, the liminal and self-sustaining exhibition space founded in 2012 by the magazine CURA. at 128 Viale Giuseppe Mazzini, in the heart of the bourgeois Prati district, just a stone's throw from the Vatican and the Tiber. The formula is deliberately provocative: the organizers speak of a "so-called biennial," a format questioned even as it is practiced, because—as the event's motto states—the underground is the new institution.

The curators

The exhibition is conceived and curated by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin, founding directors of CURA., in dialogue with an international Advisory Board composed of Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Max Colard, Simon Denny, Anthony Huberman, and Lumi Tan. The proposing entity is New Books Production S.r.l., the publishing house that produces CURA., which was selected for the "Roma Creativa. 365 cultura tutto l'anno" public call promoted by Roma Capitale and Zètema Progetto Cultura. This detail speaks volumes about the project's nature: an independent, grassroots initiative that has nevertheless found institutional recognition within the city.

How it works: a changing organism

BAAB is not a static exhibition to be visited just once. It is conceived as a living organism, a performative space destined to transform over time until it becomes a single body, a choral and collective experience. Each week, new works, actions, screenings, and interventions are added, so that a visitor returning after a fortnight finds a different setup than the one they left. The itinerary spans a wide range of media:

• Site-specific works and new productions designed for the basement rooms
• Installations and video art
• Live performances, with a program curated alongside Ilaria Mancia that continues even beyond the official closing
• Sonorama, the sound section curated by Ruggero Pietromarchi
• Talks, readings, workshops, and screenings, as well as a weekly curatorial podcast

The first edition brought together over twenty-five international artists from different generations and disciplines, including Jeremy Deller, Carsten Höller, Mark Leckey, Claudia Comte, Nora Turato, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, and the duo Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff. The exhibition is accompanied by a newspaper-format publication featuring curatorial texts and critical contributions from the Advisory Board members.

Rome, the underground, and Municipio I

BAAB fits into a precise genealogy: that of the Roman avant-gardes which, since the late 1960s, have turned cellars, garages, and disused spaces into their own laboratories. The event takes place in Municipio I of the Municipality of Rome, in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, in the Lazio region, and asserts the centrality of abandoned, peripheral, and "disqualified" spaces as places of community and public participation. In a city that often hosts contemporary art in monumental containers, descending a flight of stairs to find a biennial is a statement of intent in itself.

Frequency and outlook

The title of the first edition, Issue 00, reveals the project's editorial origins: the editions are "issues," like those of a magazine. The declared frequency is biennial, with the inaugural edition taking place in the autumn of 2025. In the intervals between editions, Basement Roma continues its regular exhibition programming, which in 2026 featured solo projects by international artists in the same Viale Mazzini spaces.