Seul sous la capuche
Sara Sadik
September 08 – September 26, 2026

THIRD BORN is pleased to present Sara Sadik’s, Seul sous la capuche, an exhibition bringing together three video works—Ultimate Vatos: Force & Honor (2022), Khtobtogone (2021), and Crystal Zastruga (2023)—alongside a video still installation from Zehefology (2023). 

Sara Sadik develops immersive narrative environments at the crossroads of video, installation, performance, and interactive practices, where reality and fiction are constantly intertwined. She constructs poetic yet critical worlds that invite audiences to experience the emotional and psychological transformation of her protagonists. Sadik’s practice is rooted in contemporary popular culture—from video games, science fiction, anime, and French rap to reality television—and uses these references as structural elements to explore identity, vulnerability, and modes of belonging.

Blending fictional and documentary approaches, she stages initiatory journeys in which protagonists confront their desires, fears, and aspirations within universes that are at once fantastical and grounded in lived experience. These narratives investigate how emotional states, cultural codes, and personal histories shape individual and collective identities, offering reflections on alienation, loneliness, brotherhood, masculinity, and self-realization.

Sadik draws on collaborative methods, building her works around the voices and experiences of teenagers and young men from social contexts shaped by marginalization. By incorporating their testimonies into her creative process, she creates platforms of expression where contemporary identities and collective memories can be reexamined, redefined, and reinvented. Her works transform ordinary gestures, everyday objects, and familiar symbols into narrative material, turning the mundane into spaces of poetic reimagining and emotional resonance.

Across her projects, screens become playgrounds in which viewers navigate between interior emotional states and exterior cultural landscapes. Whether through action-camera footage, surveillance cameras, phone footage, game engines, or interactive installations, Sadik’s work makes visible inner worlds and the social forces that shape them. Her cinematic language mirrors the fragmented, multifaceted nature of contemporary identity and experience, offering insight into the emotional lives, vulnerabilities, and aspirations of young men navigating the pressures of contemporary society.

Her work has been presented at the 18th Istanbul Biennial (2025), the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2025), MUNCH Museum (2025), FACT Liverpool (2024), M+ Hong Kong (2024), LUMA Arles (2023), Villa Medici (2023), Centre Pompidou-Metz (2023), Singapore Art Museum (2023), Jameel Arts Centre (2023), Lyon Biennale (2022), MACRO Museum (2021), and Manifesta 13 (2020), among others.

ZEHEFOLOGY, 2023
Still from the video installation, 17 min 15 sec
Commissioned by Le Consortium

The still presented in the exhibition is drawn from Zehefology, a film that follows an anonymous character wandering through an abandoned shopping mall. It captures the protagonist engaged in physical exercise—a gesture that evokes discipline, endurance, and an attempt to regain control over both body and mind within the deserted space.

Alone in the mall, he lets his mind drift, inventing stories in which he becomes the hero. Through his voice-over, he narrates the tale of the Zehefs: invisible beings created to escape the pain and suffering of the world. As the narrative unfolds, imagination becomes both a refuge and a form of resistance against an oppressive reality.

Filmed with a thermal camera, the original video visually amplifies the narrator’s emotional fluctuations, creating a sensory representation of his physical and mental state. Removed from the film’s narrative sequence, the exhibited still crystallizes the relationship between physical exertion, inner transformation, and imagined escape.

ULTIMATE VATOS: FORCE & HONOR, 2022
Video installation, 23 min 33 sec
Commissioned by Westfälischer Kunstverein

ULTIMATE VATOS begins with Ultimate Vatos: Force & Honor, which introduces the origins and ideology of the Ultimate Vatos. The film follows Zabuza, a newcomer who must face an initiation trial in the Stone Island arena in order to join this community of men rejected by society. The test is designed to confront candidates with their limits, forcing them to question loyalty, strength, and the meaning of belonging. Through Zabuza’s internal monologue, the film traces the emotional and psychological journey of someone trying to enter a collective built on survival and mutual protection.

KHTOBTOGON, 2021
Short film, 16 min 09 sec
Commissioned by CNAP—Centre national des arts plastiques

Khtobtogone is an intimate portrait of Zine, a 20-year-old young man striving to become the best version of himself before proposing to his girlfriend. Created using machinima within the Grand Theft Auto V engine, the film follows Zine through his daily life, revealing his love story, friendships, and the emotional highs and lows he navigates.

Caught between aspiration and self-doubt, Zine confronts inner turmoil, insecurities, and the constant effort to rebuild his self-confidence, self-love, and self-esteem. Inspired by real stories and the words of Ahmed Ra’ad Al Hamid and Brian Chiappetta, Khtobtogone uses the virtual world to mirror the challenges faced by a young man trying to shape his identity while confronting his own fears and expectations.

CRYSTAL ZASTRUGA, 2023
Video installation, 12 min 10 sec
Commissioned by BASEMENT Roma and Villa Medici

Crystal Zastruga is a project that unfolds across a film and a performance, both centered on Zetrei, a solitary man navigating grief after the loss of his mother. The film follows him as he escapes each night into a magical shisha lounge that opens the door to a parallel world. There, fragments of memories—such as letters and notes—and echoes of his mother surface, guiding him through an intimate process of remembrance and healing.