Bassem Saad is an artist and writer born in Beirut. Their work explores notions of historical rupture, spontaneity, and surplus, through film, performance, and sculpture, alongside essays and fiction. With an emphasis on past and present forms of struggle, they attempt to place scenes of intersubjective exchange within their world-historical frames.
Bassem’s work has been presented and screened at MoMA, CPH:DOX, Triangle-Asterides (Marseille), Busan Biennale, Swiss Institute (Rome), Ludwig Forum (Aachen), Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), and Transmediale. Their most recent film, Congress of Idling Persons, received Special Mention in the New:Vision Award category at CPH:DOX 2022.
Their writing appears in The New Inquiry, Protean, Spike Art, Jadaliyya, FailedArchitecture, X-TRA, and The Funambulist.
Solo EXHIBITIONS
TBD
Curated by Laura Herman and Godart Bakkers
Netwerk Aalst
Aalst, Belgium / November 2024
Des fumées dans la ville voisine / Smoke in the next city
Curated by Victorine Grataloup
Triangle - Astérides
Marseille / February - May 2023
Suppose that Rome is not a human habitation
Peles Empire (Berlin Art Prize Shortlist)
Berlin / September - October 2022
SCREENINGS
Congress of Idling Persons (36 mins., 2021)
Special Mention New:Vision Award at CPH:DOX 2022
March 2022
Premiere at MoMA Doc Fortnight 2022
March 2022
Screening at DocLisboa International Film Festival 2022
October 2022
Screening at European Media Art Festival 2023
April 2023
Screening at Camden International Film Festival 2022
September 2022
Shortlisted for Sunset Kino Awards 2021 at Salzburger Kunstverein
Drafts screened at Transmediale 2021, Queer Cinema for Palestine at Sursock Museum, and elsewhere. Commissioned by Transmediale 2021, additional funding by Open City Documentary Film Festival 2020
Kink Retrograde (19 mins., 2019)
Screened at The Flaherty Film Seminar, David Roberts Art Foundation, Bertha DocHouse, Akademie der Künste / Berlin Art Week, and elsewhere
Saint Rise (14 mins., 2018)
Sharjah Film Platform
Annual film festival by Sharjah Art Foundation / December 2019
in Inner Space / Outer Space
RIU + Le Citta' Visibili / Ex-Macello / Rimini, Italy / July 2018
in Immaterial Collection II: Evolving Icons
Screening + conversation with curator Joy Stacey
Beirut Art Center / June 2018
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Amid the Alien Corn (Berlin Program for Artists) at KW Institute
Curated by Sofie Krogh Christensen and Sophia Yvette Scherer / December 2023
Poetry for Revolutions at Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich) and Swiss Institute (Rome)
Curated by Gioia Dal Molin and Salome Hohl / October 2023
Illiberal Lives at Ludwig Forum Aachen
Curated by Eva Birkenstock, Anselm Franke, Holger Otten and Kerstin Stakemeier / April 2023
In the meantime, midday comes around at Kunsthalle Wien
Curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić und Sabina Sabolović)
November 2022
Leaves for Burning at University of California at Irvine, Room Gallery
Curated by Juli Carson & Heather M. O'Brien / October 2022
Busan Biennale 2022 at Museum of Contemporary Art Busan
Curated by Haeju Kim
September 2022
Rendering Refusal in transmediale 2021 at Kunstraum Kreuzberg
Curated by Nora O Murchú, Lorena Juan and Ben Evans James / January 2021
la clinique du queer at Maison Populaire
Curated by Thomas Conchou / Paris / September 2020
to Thomas at École Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Bourges, La Box
Curated by Lucas Morin and Sasha Pevak / February 2020
STRUKTURA Time in The Wrong Biennale
with Edwin Nasr / curated by Lesia Vasylchenko / October 2019
Videobox x Le Syndicat Magnifique
Le Carreau du Temple, Paris / September 2018
Open Studios of Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan
July 2019
Institute of Patent Infringement at London Design Festival
V&A Design Museum / September 2018
in Insitute of Patent Infringement at WORK, BODY, LEISURE
Dutch Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennial 2018 / May 2018
PERFORMANCES
Permanent Trespass (Beirut of the Balkans and the American Century) with Sanja Grozdanić, performed at:
Live Works 11 - Centrale Fies / Dro, Italy / July 2023
Curated by Barbara Boninsegna and Simone Frangi
Reenactment Symposium / Stroom Den Haag / October 2022
Curated by Lua Vollaard
Sunflower Theater / Beirut / December 2021
Commission by Ashkal Alwan, curated by Christine Tohme
Künstlerhaus Mousonturm / Frankfurt / September 2021
Commissioned as part This is Not Lebanon Festival, curated by Matthias Lilienthal, Rabih Mroué, Anna Wagner
The Congress of Idling Persons
Darat al Funun / Amman / October 2020
Commissioned for Open City Documentary Film Festival / London / September 2020
This Ritual I Wish You Could See (Wound Contra Empire) with Edwin Nasr
Commissioned as part of ‘In Pursuit of Images’, curated by Moad Musbahi and Ana Maria Nicolaescu
Architectural Association Lecture Hall / London / February 2020
The Skin Unmoored and Queer Fear
Lecture-performance and remote-access online tour of systemcare (All cared for by chains and loops)
2nd <Interrupted = “Cyfem and Queer> / Berlin / April 2019
This Ritual I Wish You Could See (Render and file) with Edwin Nasr
ACAW Field Meeting Take 6
Alserkal Avenue / Dubai, UAE / January 2019
Talks, PANELS & READINGS
Artist talk at KASKlezingen
KASK & Conservatorium - Gent School of Arts
October 2023
Talk: The Syntagm: Struggle, Realism, Form
Critical Studies Programme / Sandberg Institute
October 2023
Artist talk as part of Illiberal Lives
Ludwig Forum / Aachen / August 2023
Hervé Guibert Reading: Queer Reading Night
with Andrew Durbin, Nat Marcus and Bassem Saad
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin / July 2023
Suppose that Rome is not a human habitation - Reading
with Jesse Darling, Sam Dolbear, Lama El-Khatib, Haytham El Wardany, Elijah Jackson, Zuhour Mahmoud, Maxi Wallenhorst and Sarah Zeryab
Haus der Statistik / Berlin / September 2022
BOM DIA Book launch reading (Simone Fattal Klosterruinenzine)
with Fion Pellacini, Manuel Raeder, Anna M. Szaflarski, Maxi Wallenhorst
Klosterruine / Berlin / May 2022
Transmediale Symposium 2022: Terms and Conditions
Panel with Nishant Shah, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Xenia Chiaramonte, Paolo Gerbaudo
Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt / Berlin / January 2022
Birmingham Open Media’s Art&Tech Social
Artist talk / June 2020
Artists Navigating Digital Borders
Panel with Shaka McGlotten, Carolyn Kirschner, Christoffer Horlitz / CultureHub / New York / November 2019
systemcare: On destituent power in toxic and/or revolutionary space-times
Lecture and presentation of systemcare / Bread&Net 2019 Conference by SMEX / Beirut / November 2019
This Ritual I Wish You Could See: Communitarian Futurism in the Rendered Image
Lecture with Edwin Nasr / Rendering Graduate Student Conference
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts / Harvard University VES
Cambridge, MA / April 2018
INTERVIEWs, press & academic articles
Fire is of The Imagination: Hannah Gregory on Bassem Saad at Triangle-Astérides, Marseille
Texte Zur Kunst (Online)
July 2023
The Affective Lives of Colonial Economies
with Jonas Bens, at Affect and Colonialism Web Lab, Free University Berlin and Humboldt University
May 2022
Film and the Toxic Politics of Waste: A Roundtable
with Hanna Baumann, Adriana Massidda, Bassem Saad, Elizabeth Saleh, and Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
e-flux Journal Issue #127
May 2022
The Right Connections: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on Bassem Saad’s Congress of Idling Persons
Artforum (Print + online)
March 2022
Bassem Saad by Shiv Kotecha
BOMB Magazine (Print + online)
January 2022
The racial politics of smart urbanism: Dubai and Beirut as two sides of the same coin by Özgün Eylül İşcen
Ethnic and Racial Studies: Volume 44, 2021
April 2021
Scripture Podcast, Ep. 01: On Toxicity, Entropy and Hope
by Future Host and Cacotopia (with Tingying Ma) ft. Nene H, Macalline Art Center
May 2021
Artist-in-Residence Interview at Transmediale
January 2021
Eyebeam Resident Artists Closing Conversations, with Zach Blas
with Sofía Córdova in conversation with Carmen Winant
July 2020
Resident Interview at Eyebeam
with Mimi Onuoha - January 2020
A Calamitous Node in a Planetary Chain
interview by Sophie-Charlotte Opitz for Schloss-post, Akademie Schloss Solitude
March 2019
RESIDENCies
Live Works Residency at Centrale Fies
2022-2023 / Dro, Italy
Berlin Program for Artists
2022-2023
Leslie Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship 2020-2021
October 2020 - May 2021
Terms of Refusal Eyebeam Residency
January - June 2020 / Brooklyn, NY
Resident fellowship at Home Workspace Program
2018-2019 / Ashkal Alwan / Beirut, Lebanon
Other work
Editorial Team Member - FailedArchitecture
March 2020 - January 2023
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Architecture (2017) at the Lebanese American University
2012-2017
Beirut, Lebanon
Ecole Speciale d'Architecture
February - June 2016
Paris, France