LISTE Art Fair Basel

40 40 Home! is an interactive installation that transforms an art fair booth into a temporary playground where memory, play, and intergenerational intimacy coalesce. Named after a childhood game familiar to the artist, Sasi Organ reflects on the rule: players must move unseen toward a designated 'home base' and only upon reaching it can they call out '40 40 home!' to claim safety, caught between exposure and refuge where being seen before arrival means being excluded. This dynamic becomes a metaphor for Sasi Organ's mixed-race identity: an ongoing negotiation of legibility, visibility, and the desire to inhabit a space of recognition without the burden of explanation or performance. The presentation invites viewers to enter an environment built from replicated and interactive elements derived from the artist's personal vocabulary of games.

At the center of the installation is a functional replica of a roundabout, conceived as the physical embodiment of a “home base,” inviting viewers to spin and engage. Its circular form evokes cycles of return—of memory, of intergenerational care, of cultural inheritance passed through gesture.

Around it, metal table and chairs host replicas of games inherited through the artist's matrilineal heritage, such as Makkhum (a traditional mancala game known by various names across Southeast Asia), taught to her by her Thai grandmother. A suite of paintings draws on the formal language of Thailand's traditional kites, Chula and Pakpao: the large, five-pointed Chula symbolizing strength, and the smaller, diamond-shaped Pakpao embodying agility. Together, they reflect a sibling duality rooted in Sasi Organ's brother's middle name, Chula. Through reimagining these fading traditions, the artist proposes another definition of home.

In The Game of Fate, Natalie Sasi Organ transforms the childhood origami fortune-teller game. Painted as a cyclical sequence, the work unfolds like stop-motion animation: hands fold, flip, and open the paper toy around its circumference, each frame capturing a subtle shift in position—a new configuration of fate. The repetition is hypnotic, almost ritualistic: the same motions endlessly repeated, yet never yielding the same outcome.

Together, these works function as both personal relics and universal conduits, revealing how play becomes a medium of cultural inheritance, emotional attachment, and the fleeting suspension of identity within the communal act of participation.

Through this choreographed environment, Sasi Organ probes the constellation of gestures, rules, and relationships that shape one's sense of self and belonging. Reframed within the context of adulthood, the work repositions childlike play as an act of presence, encouraging participation as a form of connection. The presentation ultimately invites viewers to reflect on their own 'home bases': the movements, people, and rituals that have offered sanctuary in a world that seldom accommodates unconditional belonging. While grounded in the artist's reflections on past nurturance and inherited relational structures, the interactive elements function as propositions for future relationality.