Nicolas Deshayes's Post-Minimalist She-Wolf at Basement Roma

Nicolas Deshayes (Nancy, 1983) presents a site-specific installation at Basement Roma, where water and heat serve as fundamental principles of life. The centerpiece reimagines the Capitoline She-Wolf as a post-minimalist work: eight breasts in series, crafted from disorienting forms and materials, reflecting on maternity. This comes after the recent censorship of the she-wolf by Iranian television. A system of water pipes runs along the perimeter of other rooms like water pumps, fed by a boiler at the entrance, irrigating three aluminum radiator-sculptures resembling human organs or floating DNA particles. Despite using industrial materials and processes, Deshayes suggests a human presence, moving beyond Picabia's provocative machines or Donald Judd's mere forms. The exhibition evokes Hugo's "belly of Paris" with its sewers, streets, intersections, squares, arteries, and circulation.