‘Century Bingo’ is the first solo exhibition in Belgium by artist and writer Bassem Saad (1994, Beirut, Lebanon). Through film, writing, performance, sculpture, and installation, Saad’s work explores historical and contemporary forms of struggle, animating structures and ideologies with interpersonal dialogue. With a background in architecture, Saad often engages with urban space and architecture, in cities such as Beirut, Berlin, New York, and now Brussels. Her work comments on the dynamics of normalised crises and control through infrastructure, soft power and policing, while also exploring the potential for justice in the aftermath of imperialism.

In ‘Century Bingo’, Saad presents a new collage-installation of the same name emulating the structure of a traditional bingo game. The exhibition also includes the films Congress of Idling Persons (2021) and Kink Retrograde (2019; 2022), a vinyl text installation titled Destiny?(2024), and an ongoing series of lenticulars called Suppose that Rome is not a human habitation (2022–present). Premiering at this exhibition is Permanent Trespass, a film installation developed in collaboration with author Sanja Grozdanić. The work is based on Saad and Grozdanić’s theater performance Permanent Trespass (Beirut of the Balkans & the American Century). 

Throughout ‘Century Bingo’, Saad explores the epoch we inhabit, challenging the conventional notions of fate and faith, progress, conquest and teleological development in political history. The exhibition focuses on the “American Century,” a term that describes the era of American world-hegemony that began after World War II. The works explore key moments and locations from the last hundred years, touching on the Palestinian Nakba, Third World national liberation, Black Lives Matter, Arab Spring as well as the events of October 7th, combining moments of uprising and joy, with those of loss and defeat. At its core, the exhibition poses questions about what may come next after we have said goodbye to the century and mourned its victims, exploring what new forms of social order and power structures might emerge in a multipolar world and how we might navigate our place within it. 

Permanent Trespass is co-commissioned by NW and EMPAC–Curtis R. Priem Center for Experimental Media and Performing Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.