At Supermarket 2026, BAST will present Traces of Participation — a selection of five participatory art projects from across Iran by five artists/collectives. These works will be shared through zines, texts, photographs, and short videos that document their processes and contexts. Each project offers a distinct perspective on participation shaped by its locality, temporality, and social conditions, inviting viewers to reflect on how art can generate collective dialogue within constrained environments. (including Negar Farjiani(IR/US), Fatemeh Fazayel (IR) and New Media Society (IR) among others. Our space at the supermarket will function as a hybrid space: part research display, part participatory platform. Visitors will be invited to engage with the material, contribute reflections, and join a broader conversation about the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of participation.
ABOUT BAST
Bast (بسط in Persian, from the Arabic root meaning to expand or to articulate) is an interdisciplinary collective of artists, curators, and researchers working at the intersection of art, activism, and knowledge production. Our practice centers on curatorial, editorial, and research-based studies of participatory art projects in Iran — exploring how these practices respond to and reshape social and political realities. United by a shared concern for the fragility of collective memory, omitted narratives, and the urgency of creating spaces for marginalized voices, BAST reimagines the archive not as a static repository but as a living, participatory, and dynamic entity. Our work aims to build sustainable networks of cultural practitioners engaged in collaborative, process-based forms of making and remembering.
BAST’s presence in Stockholm is facilitated by Room for Doubt. This marks the founders' second participation at the fair since their involvement in 2015 with Parkingallery / New Media Society. This participation continues a chain of sister projects dating back to 1998, with subsequent iterations in 2014 and 2022. Room for Doubt is an artist-run, nomadic project space with stations in Tehran and Berlin. BAST is currently in the process of establishing its own platform, with its website and visual identity under development.