Sara Sadik's Grand Theft Auto film is on show in two museums into 2027
A 2021 video made with the graphics of Grand Theft Auto, the open-world action game, is now on view in two group shows that run into early 2027. The film is Khtobtogone by Sara Sadik, according to ARTnews, which reported on the work this month.
The film is part of 'Beyond the Manosphere: Masculinities Today' at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, a museum in St. Gallen, Switzerland, on view through January 2027. It is also in 'Harder Better Faster Stronger – Are Men OK?' at Fotografiska, a photography museum in Stockholm, Sweden, which runs through February 2027.
Sadik is a video and performance artist based in Marseille, in the south of France. She was born in Bordeaux and trained at the Ecole superieure des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, the city's fine arts school, before moving south. Most of her work is set in Marseille, and she develops her films through workshops with local communities there.
Khtobtogone is animated entirely inside Grand Theft Auto V, according to Le Cinema Club. ARTnews describes its subject as the private lives of young French Muslim men and teenagers. Many of Sadik's films are set in spaces that are mostly male, such as shisha lounges, the cafés where people smoke flavoured tobacco through water pipes.
Her method is unusual. Sadik often makes films with video games, 3D software or 360-degree cameras that copy the way a player moves through a game. Frieze, the London art magazine, wrote in 2023 that she channels a longing for brotherhood into games such as Grand Theft Auto.
She uses the word "Beurcore" for a youth culture she explores in her work. In a 2022 announcement, the e-flux platform linked the term to Ultimate Vatos: Force & Honneur, a 2022 work about masculine hierarchies that screened at the 3HD Festival in Berlin. Numero, the fashion and culture magazine, says her video works draw on video games, music, anime and manga to stage that culture.
Her newest piece, TALS&TALOS MARKETPLACE (2026), deals with the gamification of work, meaning the way jobs are turned into games with points and rewards. It is on view at Le Large on the Ile Seguin, an island on the Seine near Paris, through March 2027. Her 2023 work Crystal Zastruga focuses on grief.
Sadik's work has also been shown at a range of venues. Villa Medici in Rome programmed a performance by her, and her work has appeared at MACRO museum in Rome, Matadero in Madrid, Sadie Coles HQ in London and Gladstone Gallery in New York. Her solo show 'Seul sous la capuche' was held at THIRD BORN in Mexico City, where Khtobtogone was shown.
