At Kunsthalle Basel, “PANTHEON” reimagines a business district as a stage on which power is constructed, contested, and memorialized. Weaving together film, objects, and spatial installations, Valentin Noujaïm (b. 1991) creates in his inaugural institutional solo exhi- bition an experience that unearths untold stories hidden in the shadows of urban landscapes.
With the premiere of the final part, the filmmaker concludes his trilogy, La Défense, which can be seen
here in its entirety for the first time. In a France that drowns out the histories of its marginalized minorities, Noujaïm uses the sensual to make their stories visible, employing a cinematic strategy that thus consciously becomes a political gesture. His protagonists move through nocturnal streets, conference room debris, and underground clubs, accompanied by atmospheric soundscapes and pulsating rhythms. Either alone or in conversation, they reflect on the dehumanization and alienation of a surveillance-ridden society, their experiences spanning the 1980s to the present.
In each of the exhibition spaces, the cinematic is transformed into installation—each film presented in a specific scenography. Visitors, walking through corridors of a seemingly abandoned building, encounter ghostly remnants of conference rooms and instruments of surveillance. Watched over by historical gargoyles, La Défense, both the setting of the trilogy and Europe’s largest business district, looms as both the subject and a metaphor of institutional power.
Noujaïm’s “PANTHEON” stands as a counter-monument to the state’s pantheon by honoring the overlooked stories and suppressed voices that are equally part of French society. His exhibition thus becomes a critical resonance chamber that endures society’s fractures to create alternative images.
at Kunsthalle Basel
until May 25, 2025