SAGG Napoli Hits the Target

In an immersive installation at Basement Roma, the artist uses archery to challenge notions of strength and gender stereotypes

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BY Ana Vukadin in Exhibition Reviews | 22 JAN 25

On the opening night of her solo show at Basement Roma, multidisciplinary artist SAGG Napoli made her way through the throngs of visitors spilling out of the small gallery. She walked inside unobtrusively, her head bowed and partly concealed by a hoodie as she listened to music on her headphones. Perhaps it was her diminutive figure or her inconspicuous outfit, but it was only once she stepped inside the performance space, demarcated by a wire mesh fence, that the crowd realized it was the artist herself – her persona otherwise well-known thanks to a prolific Instagram account that doubles as an extension of her artistic practice. SAGG calmly proceeded to get ready for her performance – an archery session – with transfixing concentration.

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SAGG Napoli, ‘Sempre Contratta’, 2024–25, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Basement Roma; photograph: Daniele Molajoli

The artist’s venture into professional archery four years ago was almost accidental: she approached the sport for an art project that never panned out. Yet, the discipline and consistency it demanded became an inextricable part of her life and artistic practice. For her sole and titular installation at Basement Roma, Sempre Contratta (Always Tense, 2024–25), SAGG presents a lilac exercise area for archery, complete with changing-room benches, a table to assemble her bow and a target board on the far side of the space. A new series of videos on monitors that dot the perimeter of the exercise area capture the artist alternately warming up or training in a white space. Her focus is razor sharp, her movements repetitive, almost obsessively so, her athletic prowess evident.

At the back, three new self-portraits deftly juxtapose strength with pain: SAGG is portrayed as a naked female colossus, her larger-than-life body drawn over anatomical maps, recalling the posters that typically adorn the walls of physiotherapy studios. These mappe del dolore (maps of pain), as she calls them, highlight her recurring trigger points: hyperirritable muscular knots caused by a neuromuscular reaction to injury or inflammation. Pain, we infer, is a precondition of strength. The word ‘trigger’, of course, is also key in psychotherapy: describing sensory reminders of trauma, it has made its way into common parlance around mental health.

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SAGG Napoli, ‘Sempre Contratta’, 2024–25, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Basement Roma; photograph: Daniele Molajoli

For SAGG, who speaks openly about being diagnosed with borderline personality and bipolar disorder, muscular and psychological trigger points are two sides of the same coin: body and mind are critically linked. It is how we deal with these pressures that is key to our wellbeing, informing our identity and sense of agency. Drawing on personal experience, SAGG shares her own affirmations in the hope that they might help others. In the gallery, a text on the lilac floor reads ‘TARGET: what you see on the target is a reflection of your mind’; nearby, on a whiteboard scribbled over with her exercise annotations, the words ‘CALM, CONFIDENT, CONSISTENT’ stand out in block letters, with an arrow leading to ‘CONSISTENCY OVER INTENSITY’.

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SAGG Napoli, ‘Sempre Contratta’, 2024–25, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Basement Roma; photograph: Daniele Molajoli

Throughout ‘Sempre Contratta’, SAGG continues to embrace what she terms ‘southern aesthetics’ – a reference to Northern Europeans’ misconceptions about the trashy excesses (tracksuits, chunky gold jewellery, long painted nails) of their Southern counterparts. The artist probes not only the geopolitics of this divide, but also interrogates gender and identity. In sports, attributes associated with overt femininity are often portrayed as unseemly at best, a hindrance at worst. Over and over in this show, we see that the opposite is true. SAGG’s nude female colossus stands proud and determined, gloriously transcending stereotypes, embracing instead her layered complexities: her long black hair is braided, gold hoops adorn her ears and all her pain points are laid bare.

SAGG Napoli, ‘Sempre Contratta’ is on view at Basement Roma until 14 February 

Main image: SAGG Napoli, ‘Sempre Contratta’, 2024–25, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Basement Roma; photograph: Daniele Molajoli

Ana Vukadin is a writer, translator and editor who lives in Jesi, Italy.

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