THE PROJECT

The project proposed by FRENCH PLACE presents a constellation of site-responsive works by Marco Siciliano conceived as a subtle occupation of spaces positioned at the margins of productivity. Siciliano approaches architecture as an ideological device to be suspended from its function rather than simply used. The works do not introduce new forms of production but instead propose moments of disactivation: neon lights that flicker rather than illuminate, infrastructures that emerge into visibility, and surfaces that preserve traces of past temporalities.

Operating between public and private, visibility and erasure, function and desire, Siciliano’s practice transforms the office into a suspended environment: an architecture on the verge of exhaustion. The works inhabit marginal zones of the building, transitional spaces that are not neutral sites but rather hidden infrastructures that allow systems of productivity to function while remaining unseen. By intervening within these areas, the project exposes the unconscious rhythms of contemporary labour: fatigue, maintenance, repetition, and delay.

In dialogue with the fair’s exploration of the underground as a space of resistance, Siciliano understands non-productivity not as absence, but as a structural condition. Time throughout the exhibition is stretched and suspended: a minute before midnight becomes infinite in 23:59, while the Myopia Series withholds complete visibility through obscured photographic surfaces that can never be entirely grasped at once.

In a context increasingly marked by the dematerialisation of the body and the substitution of physical experience with circulating images, the works insist on presence: they can only be fully encountered by those who remain, wait, look closely, and experience them in real time.

Rather than transforming the office into a spectacle, the project reclaims it as a porous environment in which work, rest, intimacy, and exhaustion coexist. In this sense, Siciliano’s installations propose a temporary interruption of the logic of efficiency and extraction — a space where silence, flicker, and fragility become forms of resistance.

MARCO SICILIANO

Born in 1991, Marco Siciliano lives and works between Berlin and Milan. His practice unfolds across sculpture, installation, photography, video, sound, and artist books, engaging with questions of intimacy, desire, vulnerability, and the politics of exposure. Working through fragmented narratives and material assemblages, Siciliano explores how bodies—human and non-human—are shaped by systems of care, control, and representation. His works often function as sensitive dispositifs: spaces of tension where affect, memory, and corporeality intersect, and where personal experience serves as a lens through which broader social dynamics are examined.

Through a practice grounded in fragility and exposure, Siciliano constructs environments in which closeness and distance, attraction and unease, coexist in a state of suspension. Objects, images, and spatial arrangements become agents within intimate choreographies, inviting viewers into situations that oscillate between care and discomfort. Rather than offering resolution, his work holds these tensions open, framing vulnerability not as a weakness but as a critical and generative condition.

In recent years, Marco Siciliano has presented his work through a series of solo and group exhibitions across Europe. Recent and upcoming projects include Circa at Kunstverein am Rosa–Luxemburg–Platz, Berlin (2026), curated by Chiara Valci Mazzara, and a forthcoming exhibition at Cable Depot, Sofia (2026), curated by Iavor Lubomirov & Marta Orsola Sironi. Past solo exhibitions include Marcelle, his graduation show at Universität der Künste Berlin (2024), curated by Monica Bonvicini; Vergißmeinnicht, presented at Hošek Contemporary, Berlin; and Mala Voadora, Porto (2021). His work has also been shown in institutional and independent contexts, including FutureDome, Milan; Edicola Radetzky, Milan; and Superfluo, Milan.

Siciliano has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the Karl Hofer Prize finalist exhibition at Universität der Künste Berlin (2024), LSD (Love Sex Dissonance) in Berlin (2025), Abbiamo tutto, manca il resto at Farm Cultural Park (2024), Interlude at StadtGalerie Brixen (2025), and ddiiisssAPPEAARRiinngg at FeldFünf, Berlin (2023).

Additional works are available upon request. Please email marta@frenchplace.art

BASEL SOCIAL CLUB 2026: THE OFFICE

MARCO SICILIANO