In Rome, an overture to the new art season slightly impatient but positive with the capital’s first exhibition event at the Basement gallery of art magazine Cura founders Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin, who kicked off Sept. 10, 2025, the first edition of their biennial called BAAB, Basement Art Assembly Biennale, which bets on a dynamic, albeit already widely proven, format with relocation, performance and long duration. Several events and locations are scheduled through November.
Among the exhibiting artists are Carsten Höller and his pill vending machine, David Horvitz and his social garden, Davide Balula and his homemade vodka and herbal cocktail served by young bartenders behind a white-tiled bar counter at other artists’ bars, Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, then Claudia Comte and her optical curves, Jeremy Deller and his documentary on a somewhat didactic British sociology, Hannah Black and her political display, and finally the prêt-à-porter alternative but instrumental by Mattie Barringer and Amanda McGowan of the Women’s History Museum collective.
Among the advisors to this Biennale project, and in my opinion perhaps also a bit of a testimonial, is the legendary Nicolas Bourriaud (Niort, 1965) inventor of relational aesthetics theorized in the 1990s and who surprised all of Paris and the world by taking over on official assignment the then dilapidated Palais de Tokyo together with co-curator Jérôme Sans and architects Lacaton & Vassal, with an exhibition formula never before tried in a state museum, between 2002 and 2006. I was present at the historic January 2002 opening of the Palais de Tokyo, which was to instantly become a must-see stop for the contemporary art world (and beyond) in the French capital, suddenly supplanting the more fashionable Centre Pompidou. I know what an impact the opening of the Palais de Tokyo had on the very young (I was then a student at the Sorbonne) this museum that unexpectedly opened the doors to our yearning for creation and movement in a Paris we all wanted to conquer and mark. A spontaneous adhesion and a continuous turnout that took even the curators by surprise and turned that opening that lasted five days and nights into a perpetual party.
Inside, lots of concrete, ample space, and above all, the key ingredient: unpredictability at every turn, chaos, which so many still try to replicate today. I remember a breakfast-brunch with mountains of squeezed oranges served to everyone in the central lobby, and our enthusiasm, we rampant Generation X, in grasping without the need for explanation that this was also a work of art to be experienced, a work that was being enacted before our eyes and also thanks to us. The whole inauguration diluted in time was a welcoming and inclusive work, made for us and truly open to our active presence. In that moment Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory won the bet and made culture or “permaculture” to use a term dear to him.
Catching up with Nicolas Bourriaud here in Rome, where in a little more than a month he will present his first retrospective on relational art at the Maxxi, is at once a thrill, an honor and a boast for Rome, which sanctions and participates in this way in the historicization of a global movement of the last thirty years that without Bourriaud would have remained undefined and amalgamated with post-modernism, without a goal or a direction. With the concept of Relational Art, Bourriaud inaugurated not a current nor an avant-garde but a global season of contemporary art, which in this interview he compares to the world season of Pop Art.
REF. We met in Rome in 2018 during His lecture at the Macro Asilo contemporary art museum, then directed by anthropologist Giorgio De Finis. You recently returned to Rome to talk about your latest reflections on the Anthropocene at the Maxxi Museum. What brings you back to Rome today?
NB. What brings me back to Rome are the people who founded CURA Magazine, Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin, who asked me to join the steering committee of BAAB, this idea of the Biennale that I wanted to support. I find it very important that there are private initiatives that help give space to young artists, including international ones, allowing them to express their views on contemporary art. So I think I am fully in my role by coming here to support this initiative.
Is your role also to give a structure to BAAB, a Roman Biennale of Art project diluted in time and in the city?
No, I am part of the advisory board, only from this year.
Is this the first edition?
Yes, we’ll see how it develops. I have written a text for the catalog, and I hope to participate in this adventure.
So this is a long-term collaboration?
Yes, because when you are a member of a board, you support the structure.
In what way, exactly?
By sharing your experience, giving your opinion.
Did you also share your network of contacts, of artists?
Yes, of course.
What did you bring to this first edition?
For the moment, not much. It is not about participating in something circumstantial or an event. It is about accompanying the project in its development and duration.
Were you contacted well in advance by Ilaria and Andrea, who are also the founders of the Roman gallery Basement?
I was contacted this year, precisely to help with a long-term perspective.
What exactly convinced you?
I found the project interesting and thought it was going in the right direction.
Please explain the project in your own words. The title of this Biennale is “Basement Art Assembly Biennale,” the initials of which form the Arabic word BAAB, which means “door.”
I like the idea of basement, that is, of occupying non-obvious spaces to display artworks.
Does it meet your exhibition criteria?
Not absolutely, but I think the project is interesting.
So “basement,” basement in English, is a concept in YOUR chords?
Yes, it speaks to me. I think in the future it can take place in other places, develop, grow.
Do you already have specific places in Rome in mind where to spread this Biennial?
I don’t know, we will discuss it a bit. We haven’t had a meeting with the organizers yet.
I guess you will study the city of Rome in depth, its problems and potentials.
I have been coming to Rome often in the last two years. I had been there before, but particularly in these last two years because I am working on an exhibition that will be held at the Maxxi Museum starting October 28, 2025.
What will be the theme of this exhibition?
The exhibition is called 1+1 (One Plus One) The Relational Years, and it’s a kind of retrospective, a meditative reflection on what relational aesthetics was in the 1990s and its development in the following years.
Will it be the first major retrospective on your relational aesthetics?
Yes, a retrospective exhibition on relationship. So that justifies my presence here.
Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, who directed the Maxxi, is present this evening at the opening of the Biennale.
I know a lot of people in Rome.
What particularly attracts you to this city, the Italian capital?
What interests me about Rome is, a little bit like Paris, the fact that they are cities with an immense past and they have to learn to manage it in order to produce a future. I think, as André Malraux said, “one walks badly in a vacuum.” So one walks better on a ground inhabited by people, inhabited by events. And I think contemporary art should not cut ties with the past. On the contrary, it must learn to enhance it and make it present.
Your relational aesthetic is already 30 years old. Should it be considered an ideal of the past?
No, because what is interesting is that there are still many young artists who identify with these ideas. Ideas that are not necessarily dated. Even if it is 30 years old or more, an aesthetic can have extensions, a future, new applications.
Once theorized, in fact, it takes time for an aesthetic to be assimilated and make its way into artistic practices.
A theory must be lived by artists, developed by artists, carried out by artists.
Relational aesthetics has spread among artists around the world since its first insights published in France in the 1990s. Who are today those who refer to this aesthetic?
There are many today. In Bangladesh the Britto Arts Trust, in Brazil Opavivará, they are collectives. It has developed a lot in the sense of collective production. The last Documenta, the one in 2022, was entirely dedicated to that. It was a kind of homage to relational aesthetics, in a way. The Ruangrupa collective, the curator of that edition of Documenta, worked from a concept called Lumbung. The Lumbung is the collective rice barn in an Indonesian village. And I think it’s really an extraordinary extension of this idea of relational aesthetics.
And here in Rome, in particular, have you noticed relational tendencies?
In Rome, in Paris, in Berlin, in New York, there are always people going back to this. The most obvious continuation of this aesthetic is the aesthetic of care, that is, of taking care.
Caring: we are in the realm of the affective. Is this an aspect that you had already identified at the beginning of your theory on relational art?
It is not a new aspect, it was already present in the book [nda: L’Art Relationnel, 1998]. An artist named Christine Hill said she was trying to repair the fractures in the social body. And many artists were also working on emotional dimensions, on human relationship, like Noritoshi Hirakawa in Japan and many others. So it’s not new, it’s a facet of relational aesthetics that has been much more exploited by contemporary society, and that corresponds to a current sociability, to the extent that, for example, queer aesthetics today is traversed by the emotional, the need to care, to cultivate a certain emotionality. It’s something I see a little bit everywhere, so for me it’s not about new things, it’s about developments.
The emotional is not really the same thing as the affective.
Yes, I find that it is.
What distinguishes relational from public relations, networking or lobbying, to use managerial terms that are practiced everywhere?
The definition I used to give of relational aesthetics was: an art that takes as its theoretical and practical basis the sphere of human relations. And everything I just talked about corresponds to that. It was a rather general definition, like “Pop Art” in the 1960s.
Pop Art is the opposite of emotional and relational.
Totally, insofar as it is based on mass consumption, on product, on advertising. But if you look at everything that Pop Art influenced in the 1960s (whether it’s in Brazil, in Spain, in Italy) there are things that don’t necessarily look like Warhol or Rosenquist, but belong in a general way to the Pop Art sphere. I think the relational aesthetic is kind of the same thing. It is a base from which numerous artists have developed their own interests, their own issues. And it’s wonderful to see all of that, 30 years later.
In the text you wrote for the BAAB catalog, you start from the etymology of curating, which comes from the verb “curare,” taking care of artists, of works. Is relational art also curating feelings?
It is a play on words that works especially in Italian. In Italy, in Italian, we have a memory of the etymology. In French we don’t have it. In English not even much.
For that matter, maybe not even on a social level.
Not even on a social level, yes.
Yet you were saying earlier that in your opinion Paris and Rome are similar, whereas it would be more natural to think that, at least on an affective level, Rome has much more to offer than Paris. Italy in general has a Mediterranean culture, which is warmer and more welcoming, where affection is still very much ingrained.
I tend to think that these are very shared concepts throughout Europe. I don’t think the concept of caring or taking care is related specifically to Rome. It is something I see a lot in Paris as well. Paris has changed, after all. In the last ten years it has changed a lot.
In your opinion, what has caused Paris to change on an emotional level?
There are many more collectives. There are issues that are as important in Paris as in Rome. I think the theme of care, “taking care,” and the theme of the Anthropocene are equally relevant in Paris as in Rome. Today we live in post-industrial societies, all affected and influenced by the same dynamics. I think the problem of the Anthropocene, for example, is as important in Rome as it is in Berlin or Paris.
During the lecture at the Maxxi, he talked about the end of distance-which I interpret as the end of privacy and intimacy-as the main consequence of instantaneity, globalization, overpopulation, and climate change. He said that we are experiencing a saturation of common space. How do you explain the fact that, despite this saturation, we still manage to create collectives - basically friendships? How can the affective sphere survive today, despite everything?
It is increasingly threatened by the living conditions imposed on all human beings in the Western world. In Italy, in France, in Germany, in Spain-these are all realities where things do not differ much. It is the capitalist economy that generates values that affect the whole world.
Don’t you find that France is more affected than Italy by capitalism, on an affective level?
No, I don’t think so. I don’t have that impression at all.
So in your opinion there is nothing that distinguishes Italian society from French society on this level?
There are many things that distinguish them culturally, but not at this level. They are both capitalist economies that aim to standardize everything. Then it is up to each one to respond, to oppose, to find ways to escape the standards. I am very happy to be in Italy because, culturally, of course, it is very different from France.
What distinguishes the two cultures?
This would be a very long discussion! The history of this country is not the same as French history, and differences in culture have arisen.
Christianity is perhaps the basis of this relational difference.
France is also a very Christian country.
But one feels much less the weight of Christianity in Paris than here in Rome near the Vatican.
It is true. It is true that in France there is much more overt atheism and that the separation of church and state in 1905 created a very different context than in Italy.
Here atheism remains a rather abstract concept, not yet fully assimilated.
True, but it cannot be said that France is not a deeply Catholic country.
In Italy the family bond remains very strong, which gives a seemingly more affectionate relational experience.
It is less pronounced in France because, since the beginning of the 20th century, the country has been organized around the mononuclear family, while Italy remained until the 1980s-1990s strongly dominated by a polynuclear family structure, welcoming, for example, grandparents, with a more extended view of the family. But these are sociological facts. What they produce at the artistic level is another matter.
Who are the people in your extended family here in Italy?
People, individuals. With whom I have shared moments, a history, and whom I like to meet regularly.
People who are part of your relational adventure?
Of course, also.
What has changed in your theory from the release of your first book on relational art to your most recent publications on the Anthropocene?
There has been an obvious change. In the early 2000s, when Paul Crutzen coined the concept of “Anthropocene” and clearly showed the impact of human industry on climate, there was a general awareness. This has translated, for example, into the work of artists such as Pierre Huyghe.
You often quote Pierre Huyghe.
Yes, because we had a similar path.
Is he your alter ego?
I tend to think so, yes. He was really interested in interhuman relations in the years 1990-1995.
He didn’t bring it here with him tonight.
No, but he will be in the Maxxi exhibition. Like me, Pierre Huyghe realized that one could no longer limit oneself to the interhuman sphere. Relationships also include the non-human, that is: we can no longer talk about relationships without thinking about the bonds that unite us to animals, minerals, bacterial life and so on, to life in general.
He even said more: that today we can no longer buy even a simple jar of Nutella without being aware of its environmental impact i.e., that it contributes to deforestation in Indonesia, for example.
Yes, the butterfly effect has become a concrete reality.
Can one no longer escape this awareness, even by denying the ecological impact?
No, one can no longer. And this has evolved relational aesthetics. I have written a lot about what I have called “integral relational aesthetics,” which is the set of relationships we have with the living. It is animated by a fundamental idea, which is that there are no relations between a human subject and objects, only relations between subjects. The living has an “agentivity”: all living elements are agents of the life in which we are immersed. We can no longer limit ourselves to the sphere of relations between human beings alone: we must integrate the totality of existing subjects. We now see the world in a completely different way.
Don’t you find that this resembles, in a way, the Catholic principles of universal love?
No, Catholicism is based on exactly the opposite idea. In Genesis there is the famous phrase that human beings will rule over all Creation. Animals, plants: everything should be the object of man.
Yet the message of Jesus Christ, he addressed to all. It also makes me think of St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures .
Christ’s message was addressed only to human beings, absolutely not to the rest of the living.
So the idea of Christian love was a bit more limited?
Very limited, but it was already something, you could say.
So he deliberately avoided the word “love” in his relational theory? Could you have called it love aesthetics?
I avoided the term “love” because it is too overused, too Catholic connoted. Catholicism is an enterprise of subjugating the living in favor of the human being. It is clearly written in Genesis, I am not making it up.
Should one avoid talking about love today?
Not avoid it, but neither claim it as a term for an aesthetic. I use the term “love” in the context of permaculture.
Explain to us what is the place of love in relational art.
Permaculture is the reconstruction of all the ties that exist within an ecosystem. The notion of philia, which in Greek is one of the forms of love, is ubiquitous. It is in this way that I connect love to contemporary art. An artist’s work is not a series of objects, it is an ecosystem.
Does that mean that in order to create a work of art one has to be a group?
An ecosystem is not a group, but a system that feeds itself and then densifies. And this densification is precisely the work of art.
So the work of art is the set of relationships of an artist.
It is the production of relations between the different parts of his work.
I struggle to understand according to your theory how to distinguish, take for example, an artist like Jeff Koons (a star with an exaggerated sphere of influence) from an artist who has a real, proportionate and more authentic impact on his entourage and environment.
That is perhaps where an artist like Jeff Koons sins! That’s where there’s a problem...however you have to think about it, I’m not sure. But I think that every artist, at least the ones I’m interested in, works by densification of their ecosystem, and not by simple addition. This densification is the enrichment of an ecosystem, where things respond to each other. In Picasso, the works respond to each other, there is a densification of the same themes. It is not an addition of themes, it is an ecosystemic thinking.
Who are the artists like Picasso today that you have been able to identify? Are they all your friends?
No, I don’t know them all. I won’t make a list, it would be too long. There are many artists, for example, who were already working in this way even before I invited them to the Gwangju Biennial. Friends are the people with whom we share a story. Our friends are not only our best friends, they are those who have seen the same things we have seen, the same films, the same exhibitions. Those are the real friends. It’s not a question of proper names, but of principles, I think.
You utter a phrase, which I think is incisive, namely that “the affective is part of ecology.” Is an affective aesthetic possible today? I am thinking, for example, of artists like Giosetta Fioroni, who is still alive, for whom the concept of “Sentimental Pop” has been used, and who has multiplied in her works affective symbols such as the heart, or others related to childhood or the love of pets such as her dachshund.
It is an absolutely positive and interesting theme, I don’t neglect it at all. There are many artists who have worked on this, such as Dorothy Iannone. But simply, in relation to my personal philosophical framework, I have avoided using the term “love” because it is too closely related to Catholicism.
You, however, have often used the term “emotional,” but that is still quite distant from “sentimental.”
No, I don’t see any difference: emotion is a feeling. I find them virtually identical.
For neuroscience, feeling is technically more elaborate than emotion, which belongs rather to the domain of drive.
It is just a matter of degree: love is more elaborate than emotion, but it is the same thing.
Among other things, you recently directed a Biennale in Korea after the one in Istanbul. Where in the world did you perceive and produce this affective or relational sphere the most?
I really liked Gwangju, Korea, but I would not live there. I lived in London for three years and in New York in the 1990s, but today New York has become a ghetto for the rich. At the time I lived there it was much more open and interesting, because many artists lived in Manhattan. I love Kyoto very much and I could live in Rome.
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