Since Plato’s Myth of the Cave, the "underground" has been the locus of many narratives: in the literary tradition of the West, subterranean environments have functioned as a mental landscape, a social terrain, an ideological roadmap, and a place for hidden realities to dwell. The reasons for going underground can be manifold: a quest for scientific truth, for technological power, for aesthetic inspiration, or an attempt to escape some natural and ecological disaster. Most of the time, those who venture into subterranean realms are both time travellers and spiritual pilgrims. They plunge below the surface of material reality on a quest for the truth that lies hidden below.

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Nicolas Sassoon's approach to the underground, and to some realities that are “submerged”, both in geological and social terms, follows in the wake of Félix Guattari’s intuition: that we need to think of ecology not only in terms of nature but, at the same time, from the standpoint of subjectivity and social relations.

In the exhibition Subterranea, three of Nicolas Sassoon’s latest projects are presented: The Prophets, CORES (in collaboration with Rick Silva) and INDEX, AVENUE, SKYLIGHT.

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Now that our species wields geological force, as the theories of the "Anthropocene" have proved, the goal would be to enhance our receptivity to the impersonal life that surrounds us, and to elicit a more subtle awareness of the complex web of hidden connections that exists between bodies and things, ultimately enabling a deeper awareness of the political ecology we inhabit.